HC notice to ED on petitions filed by Motilal Vora and Associated Journals Limited

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has sought the Enforcement Directorate's (ED) response on petitions filed by Congress leader Motilal Vora and Associated Journals Limited (AJL), publisher of the National Herald newspaper.

A bench of Chief Justice S J Vazifdar and Justice Anupinder Singh Grewal yesterday sought response by May 23 on the petitions seeking quashing of the enforcement case investigation report registered by the ED. The report registered on July 15, 2016 by the Chandigarh office of the ED was based on a May 5, 2016 FIR of the Haryana Vigilance Bureau. The bench also asked the ED to reply as to why use of any coercive method, including the arrest of Vora, should not be stayed in the case.

Senior Congress leader and noted lawyer Kapil Sibal argued the case on Vora's behalf. The case would now come up for further hearing on May 23. The ED had issued summons last year to Vora in connection with its money laundering probe into alleged irregularities in the allotment of a plot to AJL in Haryana's Panchkula in 2005. Vora, the national treasurer of the All India Congress Committee, had been earlier summoned under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) by the Investigating Officer of the case in his capacity as the Chairman and Managing Director of the AJL.

The agency, last year, had filed a criminal complaint and booked former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, AJL officials and others on charges of alleged money laundering, taking cognisance of a Haryana State Vigilance Bureau FIR