ED arrests nephew of suspended Panchkula special judge in money laundering case

The Enforcement Directorate has arrested the nephew of a suspended judge, who was posted in a Panchkula special court, as part of a money laundering probe linked to a bribery case against the judicial officer, official sources said on Friday.

Ajay Parmar, the nephew of suspended special court judge Sudhir Parmar, was taken into custody after the federal agency conducted searches at his premises, they said, adding that he was produced before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Panchkula that sent him to ED custody till June 20.

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The arrest comes just a day after the agency arrested two directors and "key managerial persons" of Gurugram-based realty group M3M -- Basant Bansal and his son Pankaj Bansal -- on June 14 in this case.

The father-son duo were produced before a special PMLA court in Panchkula, which sent them to five-day ED custody, the agency said in a statement on Thursday.

The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to interfere with the arrest of Basant and Pankaj Bansal, saying that the petitioners have been remanded in ED custody by a trial court after arrest and it cannot decide its legality as the order has been passed by a court outside its jurisdiction.

The money laundering case in which the arrests have been made stems from an FIR filed by the Haryana Police's Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in April against Sudhir Parmar, his nephew Ajay Parmar and a third M3M group director Roop Kumar Bansal and others.

According to the FIR, the ED said, reliable information was received that Sudhir Parmar, as a judge, was showing "favouritism" to the accused Roop Kumar Bansal, his brother Basant Bansal and Lalit Goyal, the owner of real estate firm IREO, in the criminal cases of the ED and other cases of the CBI pending against them in his court.

"It was further stated (in the FIR) that as per reliable information, instances of grave misconduct, abuse of official position and demand and acceptance of undue advantage/bribe from the accused persons in the cases pending in his court were observed," the ED said.

Sudhir Parmar was suspended by the Punjab and Haryana High Court after the registration of the ACB case.

The ED said it has collected "incriminating evidence such as bank statements and money trail, etc. with respect to the allegations in the FIR before making the arrests (of Basant Bansal and Pankaj Bansal)".

The ACB in its FIR claimed that Sudhir Parmar got his nephew Ajay Parmar appointed as a legal advisor in the M3M group.

The ED carried out raids on June 1 against the M3M promoters and some others in another money laundering case linked to the IREO group and Goyal. It subsequently arrested Roop Kumar Bansal. Basant Bansal and Pankaj Bansal had obtained interim protection from arrest till July 5 from the Delhi High Court in this case.

However, the ED arrested them in the money laundering case linked to the alleged bribery of the suspended judge after filing a fresh case under the PMLA.

In a statement issued after the June 1 raids, the federal probe agency had alleged that a "huge amount of money running into hundreds of crores was siphoned off through the M3M group" in the case against the IREO group.

In one of the transactions, the M3M group received about Rs 400 crore from the IREO group through several shell companies in multiple layers, it alleged.