Hasan Ali case: PMO nod to question Puducherry governor

The prime minister’s office has given the green light to the Enforcement Directorate to question Puducherry lieutenant governor Iqbal Singh for suspected links with money launderer and tax evader Hasan Ali Khan.

The Enforcement Directorate has reportedly found that Singh had allegedly helped Khan with his passport in 1997. Singh was then a Rajya Sabha MP from Congress.

Sources said that there is a list of questions the directorate has prepared for Singh and they will be confronting him at Raj Niwas in Puducherry later this week.

Singh has reportedly accepted that he had recommended expeditious clearance of Khan’s passport, but he has also claimed that he didn’t know Khan personally and had helped with clearance on humanitarian grounds as he was told that Khan needed to travel abroad to see his ailing brother.

Singh’s name surfaced during the directorate’s questioning of Bihar-based Congress leader Amlendu Pandey in connection with the same clearance of passport.

Singh is already reported to have met Union home minister P Chidambaram in New Delhi in this connection. Chidambaram later said, “The LG is willing to make a statement to the ED.”