The special court trying cases under the prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) has directed the sealing of the charge sheet and related documents pertaining to the case filed by ED against Nagpur-based lawyer Satish Uke and his brother in an alleged money laundering case.
A special judge allowed the keeping the documents in the case to be kept in “safe custody” till further orders while hearing a plea file by Uke through his advocate Ravi Jadhav.
On June 9, the special court had taken cognisance of the charge sheet filed against Uke and his elder brother Pradeep in the alleged money laundering case and issued a process against the brothers.
Uke’s plea alleged that there have been corrections in the complaint copy filed by the ED and expressed apprehension of manipulation of the same. Jadhav said that Uke sought that the relevant documents be kept in the safe custody of the court so that there are no chances of its manipulation.
Hence they sought that the documents be kept in safe custody “in the interest of safety and security from manipulation”.
Once a court keeps documents in its safe custody, no one, including the investigating agency can access the same without special permission from the concerned court.
Uke had also filed an application for initiating action under section 340 of the Criminal Procedure Code for perjury (the offence of willfully telling an untruth or making a misrepresentation under oath) against the officers of the ED.
However, the court has kept the application in abeyance.
The court has kept the bail applications filed by the brothers for hearing on Friday, June 17.
Uke brothers were arrested in March by the ED. there are two FIRs registered against them at Nagpur. In one of the cases, they grabbed one-and-a-half acres of land in the Babulkheda area of Nagpur around two decades ago. In the second case, the brother allegedly grabbed five-and-half acres of land at Bokhare from one Mohammed Jaffar.
