Money laundering case: Another complaint accuses advocate Mittal of ‘attempting’ to grab temple land

The number of complaints against Mittal have been piling up even since ED raided his house on January 13. ED has so far received as many as 16 complaints, all alleging Mittal’s involvement in grabbing properties.

“All these complaints are under our scanner,” said a senior official.

In Saturday’s complaint, president of the temple’s management committee S S Tiwari along with general secretary Sanjeev Sagar, vice-president B S Saini and treasurer Lalit Gupta alleged that Mittal hatched a criminal conspiracy along with his clerk Ajay Singh and other associates by creating a trust, deceptively similar to the name of the original trust of the temple in 2013.

Further, by using his clout, Mittal illegally substituted two authorised signatories of the temple’s bank accounts with his own men despite the fact that the authority to substitute any person to act as an authorised person was vested with the management committee. Further, the fictitious trust by Mittal got published a booklet, naming 11 persons as members of the executive committee of the temple.

Tiwari stated in his complaint that among the 11 members, Mittal included the name of Sanjeev Sagar as a senior member whereas he never gave his consent, and he is the signatory in the present complaint filed with ED.

Tiwari alleged that in the third week of November last year, Mittal sent his goons who beat the elected members of the committee and threatened them not to enter the mandir premises. Due to his high links, even a DDR was not registered against them.

He said that the present management committee headed by him was elected last year in November and had been running the day-to-day affairs of the temple as per the rules of the administration. In his letter, he along with others demanded a criminal case against Mittal and his associates.

Sanjeev Sagar told Newsline that the recent raids by ED against Mittal had already exposed how these persons were operating to grab properties.

“He has his eyes set on mandir’s land too. We request the local authorities as well as ED to do the needful in this case,” Sagar said. Mittal, when contacted, said that this complaint was politically motivated as no one had the power to grab public property.

“I was in fact the counsel of the temple and helped it get the allotment letter issued a few years ago. After this, old members of the temple also appointed me as one of the trustees,” he said. “All the charges are baseless and none of my family members are part of it.”