E-Paper
Gupkar alliance says ED summon to Mehbooba Mufti’s mother is humiliating
Mehbooba Mufti was also questioned by the central agency in March this year in connection with a separate money laundering case.
Peoples’ Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) has condemned the Enforcement Directorate’s summon to Mehbooba Mufti’s mother Gulshan Nazir as “highly humiliating” and a “coercive act”.
“The summoning of widow of former Union home minister, late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is highly humiliating and there are not enough words to condemn such coercive acts. She is an old and frail lady and summoning her is nothing but pressure tactics of the government. Irony is that the summon was issued just hours after the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) declined to meet the visiting Delimitation Commission,” PAGD spokesman Mohamed Yusuf Tarigami said in a statement.
Nazir, in her 70s, has been asked to be present before the ED zonal office in Srinagar on July 14. According to news agency PTI, the case filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) is linked to the recovery of at least two diaries following raids on an alleged associate of Mehbooba. The diaries contain details of some purported payments made from the chief minister’s discretionary fund in alleged contravention of rules. These funds are alleged to have been diverted during the PDP rule in the erstwhile state. A few lakh rupees from these funds are alleged to have been transferred into the accounts of Nazir and some others, officials told the news agency.
Mehbooba was also questioned by the central agency in March this year in connection with a separate money laundering case. She had then alleged that those speaking against the Central government were being hounded by National investigation agencies such as ED. On Wednesday, she said summons to her mother was another attempt by the Centre to “intimidate” political opponents.
“On the day PDP chose not to meet [the] Delimitation Commission, ED sent a summon to my mother to appear in person for unknown charges. In its attempts to intimidate political opponents, GOI [Government of India] doesn’t even spare senior citizens. Agencies like NIA & ED are now its tools to settle scores,” mufti wrote on social media.
Gulshan Nazir, wife of former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and PDP founder Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was served the summon on Tuesday, the day PDP said it will stay away from the delimitation exercise ahead of election in Jammu and Kashmir calling it a “pre-planned” process aimed at disempowering people and for realising a particular political party’s “political vision”.
The PAGD said the summon was aimed to “silence the genuine demand for the reversal of unilateral and unconstitutional decisions of August 5, 2019”, referring to the day when Parliament scrapped Jammu and Kashmir’s special status by abrogating Article 370 and bifurcated the erstwhile state into two Union Territories.
The Bharatiya Janata Party state spokesman Altaf Thakur however refuted the allegation of misuse of probe agency and said that the ED must be doing investigation on some basis. “If they are clean they shouldn’t worry,” he said.
