Chandigarh, June 9 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday conducted another round of searches in a money laundering investigation involving Punjab Cabinet Minister Sanjeev Arora and some others in an alleged Rs 100 crore GST fraud case linked to the sale of mobile phones.

Official sources said the raids were underway in Delhi-Noida (NCR) and Punjab’s Ludhiana and Jalandhar in a case linked to Arora’s firm Hampton Sky Realty.

Likewise, the ED also conducted a raid on the premises of Municipal Corporation contractor Amit Bajaj in Jalandhar. Amit and his elder brother Inderjit Bajaj have been major contractors for the Municipal Corporation and other government departments in Punjab and other states, including Gujarat.

Last month, Industries Minister Arora was arrested by the ED, and he’s in judicial custody. Later, he moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court, saying his arrest on the face of it was “arbitrary, mechanical, without jurisdiction, and in violation of the mandatory safeguards guaranteed under Articles 14, 21 and 22 of the Constitution of India”.

Arora was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) from his official residence here on May 9 under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) of 2002.

Seeking his immediate release from “illegal and unconstitutional custody of the Directorate of Enforcement”, he sought directions for staying the “impugned arrest” and setting aside consequential remand.

Earlier, the searches on May 9 were carried out in Arora’s premises in Chandigarh and Delhi-NCR. In 2024, Arora, the legislator from Ludhiana (West), had faced the ED’s raids in a money laundering case related to the alleged conversion of industrial land for residential projects. At that time, he was a Rajya Sabha MP.

Hours after Arora’s arrest, Hampton Sky Realty Ltd (formerly Ritesh Properties and Industries) had denied all allegations and asserted full compliance with applicable laws in its mobile-phone export operations.

In a statement, the company said it entered the mobile-phone export business in May 2023, describing it as a government thrust area under the ‘Make in India’ and Production-Linked Incentive schemes, noting strong growth in India’s mobile-phone exports in recent years.

The company said “this factual position alone disposes of any allegation of ’round-tripping’ or ‘bogus exports’. It added, “nothing has been retained offshore, kept in any concealed account or routed back to any individual or entity.”

“The company is the victim of the alleged supplier-side fraud,” it added.

–IANS

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