Nawab Malik discharged from hospital in Mumbai after getting SC bail

Former Maharashtra minister and senior NCP leader was discharged from a hospital in Mumbai three days after the Supreme Court granted him temporary bail on medical grounds for two months.

Malik is a close aide of NCP supremo Sharad Pawar. The 64-year-old Malik, who is an MLA from Mumbai, was accorded a grand welcome as he walked out. 

Malik was arrested on 23 February, 2022, by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with a money laundering probe linked to the activities of Pakistan-based underworld don and the mastermind of 1993 serial blasts Dawood Ibrahim.

Malik was arrested under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

Days before his arrest,  the ED arrested Iqbal Kaskar, the Mumbai-based brother of Dawood Ibrahim in connection with money laundering vis-a-vis property deals. 

The ED case follows the FIR by the NIA in the Dawood Ibrahim-money laundering case. 

A property deal of  Malik and his family with an aide of Dawood Ibrahim - Sardar Shah Wali Khan and late Haseena Parkar's bodyguard Salim Patel was  under the scanner of the agency. Haseena Parkar was the sister of Dawood Ibrahim.

Sardar Khan was a trusted man of Tiger Memon, the close aide of Dawood Ibrahim - and had been convicted and sentenced by a special TADA Court to life imprisonment, which had been confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2013. 

Salim Patel was the frontman, bodyguard, and driver of Hasina Parkar, the late sister of Dawood Ibrahim, who carried out the land deals on behalf of her brother.

Malik and his legal team have rejected the charges. 

It may be mentioned, Malik has made series of allegations against  Narcotics Control Bureau's (NCB) former Mumbai zonal director Sameer Wankhede, accusing him of several service-related wrongdoings after the anti-drugs officer led a raid on a cruise ship off Mumbai's coast in October 2021 in which Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan too was arrested.