‘Hawala dealer’ Wani sent to jail till August 31
NEWDELHI: Alleged hawala dealer Mohammad Aslam Wani, arrested in connection with a deca de-old money laundering case involving Kashmiri separatist Sh ab ir Shah, was sent on Sunday to judicial custody( J C) by a Delhi court on a plea of the probe agency.
Duty Magistrate Jasjeet Kaur allowed the plea of the Enforcement Directorate( ED) after advocate N KM at ta, appearing for the investigating agency, submitted that Wani be send to JC. He was remanded in JC till August 31.
Thirty-six-year-old Wani was produced before the court on expiry of his two-week custodial interrogation, the maximum the ED could be granted under the law. He was arrested on August 6 by the ED after a sessions court here had issued an open-ended non-bailable warrant (NBW) against him and sent him to eightday ED custody.
An open-ended NBW, unlike the NBW, does not carry a time limit for its execution. According to an official, Wani was arrested in Srinagar and brought to Delhi.
The ED had issued multiple summonses for his appearance in the case, but he did not present himself before it. Shabir Shah was arrested by the agency from Srinagar on July 26. The ED action against the two was in pursuance of an August 2005 case in which the Delhi Police’s Special Cell had arrested Wani. He had allegedly claimed to have passed on ₹ 2.25 crore to Shah. In 2010, a Delhi court had cleared Wani of terror funding charges, but had convicted him under the Arms Act. The ED had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PM LA) against Shah and Wa ni.
Wani, at the time of his arrest, was allegedly found in possession of ₹ 63 lakh received by him through hawala channels from the Middle East, and a large cache of ammunition, on August 26, 2005. During questioning, he had told the agency that out of that amount, ₹ 50 lakh was to be delivered to Shah and ₹10lakhto Jaish-e-Mohammad area commander in Srinagar Abu Baqar, and that the rest of it was his commission, it was stated in the FIR. PTI