ED grills Farooq for over three hours
SRINAGAR: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday questioned National Conference president Farooq Abdullah in connection with its probe in a money laundering case, people familiar with the development said.
Abdullah reached the ED office at Rajbagh in Srinagar around 11 am amid tight security. Before going inside the office, the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister linked his questioning with the forthcoming assembly elections in the Union territory.
“This will go on till elections are held in Jammu and Kashmir… we will be harassed like this,” Abdullah told reporters.
The Lok Sabha MP from Srinagar was questioned for about three hours, an official said, declining to be named.
On May 27, the ED summoned Abdullah to its Srinagar office in connection with the money laundering case pertaining to the alleged irregularities in the Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association (JKCA).
The 84-year-old National Conference chief was JKCA president from 2001 to 2012 and the alleged financial irregularities worth ₹113-crore being probed by ED took place between 2004 and 2009.
The ED initiated the money laundering probe against JKCA office bearers based on a case registered at the Rammunshi Bagh police station in Srinagar. Former JKCA office bearers, including general secretary Mohammed Saleem Khan and former treasurer Ahsan Ahmad Mirza, have also been booked in the case.
Abdullah “misused” his position as the president of the JKCA and made appointments in the sports body so that funds sponsored by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the apex cricket body in the country, could be laundered, the federal agency has claimed.
Abdullah was questioned in 2019 and 2020 as well in connection with the case.
The ED also attached residential and commercial properties of Abdullah worth approximately ₹12 crore in December 2020, prompting the veteran leader to approach the high court. Abdullah has maintained that the properties attached by the agency that investigates financial crimes were not related to the charges and were either ancestral or acquired before the offence.
The case was later transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the high court’s directions. The CBI has filed a charge sheet in the case against the former JKCA office bearers for misappropriation of funds to the tune of ₹43.69 crore.