Chandigarh: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested the nephew of a suspended judge posted in Haryana’s special court at Panchkula, in connection with its ongoing investigation into the case of money laundering linked to an alleged bribery case against the former judicial officer.
The arrest comes a day after the ED had nabbed two directors – Basant Bansal and Pankaj Bansal - of the Gurugram-based real estate group M3M on June 14.
Ajay Parmar arrested under PMLA Act
According to media reports the ED has now arrested Ajay Parmar, nephew of the former special court judge Sudhir Parmar, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after conducting searches at his premises.
Meanwhile, Basant and Pankaj were presented before the special PMLA court in Panchkula on Thursday which sent them to five-day ED custody.
It may be recalled that the arrests are in connection with the case registered by Haryana’s anti-corruption bureau (ACB) in April against Sudhir Parmar, a former special judge for ED and CBI cases at Panchkula, his nephew Ajay Parmar and a third M3M group director Roop Kumar Bansal, besides others.
According to media reports, Sudhir Parmar allegedly favoured to the accused, namely, Roop, Basant and Lalit Goyal, owner of the real estate company IREO in various criminal cases. The ACB registered the case after it observed various instances of misconduct, misuse of official position and demand and acceptance of undue advantages/bribe from the accused in the pending cases before the court.
Sudhir Parmar suspended
It may be recalled that Sudhir Parmar was suspended by the Punjab and Haryana High Court after the registration of the said case by the ACB on April 17. Sudhir Parmar, who was an additional sessions judge rank judicial officer, presided over as the special judge, CBI and ED court at Panchkula. He was suspended by the high court on April 27.
The ED had raided various premises of M3M promoters and others in another money laundering case linked with IREO group and Goyal in June and subsequently arrested Roop. However, Basant and Pankaj obtained interim protection from arrest till July 5 from Delhi High Court, though the ED arrested them in the money laundering case linked with the alleged bribery of the former judge after filing a fresh case under PMLA.
The ED said that a huge amount of money running into hundreds of crores was siphoned off through the M3M group in the case against IREO group and that in one of the transactions, the former had received about Rs 400 crore from IREO group through several shell companies.
