Delhi court seeks ED’s response on Virbhadra’s plea

NEW DELHI: A special court has granted two weeks to the Enforcement Directorate(ED) to respond to a plea made by former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh seeking certain documents in a money laundering case against him.

Special Judge Arun Bhardwaj directed the probe agency to file its reply to the applications moved by Singh and other accused, including his wife Pratibha Singh and LIC agent Anand Chauhan, by October 5

Special public prosecutors N K Matta and Nitesh Rana appearing for ED had sought six weeks from the court for filing the response.

However, the court said, “the period of six weeks would be too long a date” and allowed two weeks. In their applications, moved through senior advocate Rebecca John and advocate Tarannum Cheema, the accused have told the court that they have not received several documents filed with the charge sheet while many papers supplied to them were not readable.

Besides Singh and his wife, the others named in the ED charge sheet are politician’s son Vikramaditya Singh, Universal Apple Associate owner Chunni Lal Chauhan, Life Insurance Corporation agent Anand Chauhan and two other co-accused Prem Raj and Lawan Kumar Roach. The charge sheet also named Tarani Infrastructure managing director Vakamulla Chandrasekhar, and one Ram Prakash Bhatia as accused. In a separate case filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in relation to the matter, the former CM, his wife and Chauhan were charge sheeted along with others.