Illegal Sand Mining Punjab ex-CM’s nephew moves bail plea: ‘ED case politically motivated’

In the application it is mentioned that Honey, who is accused number 2 in case registered by Enforcement Directorate (ED) on November 30, last year was arrested because he was partner of accused number 1 (Kudaratdeep Singh).

The bail plea says that Punjab Police had registered an illegal sand mining case against Kudaratdeep on March 7, 2018. “But in that case, after police probe, Kudaratdeep Singh, was exonerated in the same year,” says the petition.

The plea further mentions that three years after this, on November 30 last year, the ED registered an Enforcement Case Information Report in the case. It says that the only reason Honey was named in the case was cause of the fact that he and Kudratdeep had started a company together by the name of Providers Overseas Consultants Private Ltd in 2018, with the said company having no links to the sand mining case.

The bail plea says that the entire case had been built by the ED around the Rs. 9.97 crore seized during its January 18 raid, which they claimed was the honest, genuine income belonging to the applicant.
The bail plea also said that Honey was cooperating in the probe and appeared on February 3, 2022, to join investigation, post which he informed that he was under arrest under sections of the Money laundering Act.

The petition also says that there is a huge gap of time in the alleged offence (mining in 2018) and recovery of money (January 2022) and the aforesaid Rs. 9.97 crore has no connnection with the mining business of Kudaratdeep Singh. The allegation that recovered money is the proceeds of crime is fillacious, said the petition. The petition also mentioned that the aforesaid ED case was registered against the applicant only to defame the erstwhile Chief Minister of Punjab and the cases are politically motivated because at the time of raid the applicant’s uncle was contesting the elections against certain powerful opponents.

The counsel also said that prima facie, evidence does not exist for offence under sections 420, 467, 468, 471, which was registered in March 2018 and was made the basis of the ED case. Therefore, there exist no ground for interference by the ED under the PML Act 2002.

The ED had on March 31 filed chargesheet against Honey and Kudaratdeep Singh in PMLA Court under sections 3 (offence of money-laundering), 4 (punishment for money-laundering), 44 (offence triable by special courts), and 45 (offences to be cognizable and non-bailable).
Honey was arrested on the intervening night of February 3 and 4 by the ED, and as per rules, the agency had to file a chargesheet against him within 60 days.

The ED had earlier said that Honey has told them that the money seized belonged to him and that he used to take bribes from officials in lieu of giving them their choice of transfers and postings. “Bhupinder Singh has explicitly stated in his statement…all the cash which was seized from his residential premises at Ludhiana (Rs 4.09 crore), Sandeep Kumar’s premises at Ludhiana (Rs 1.99 crore) and from the Homeland House Premises at Mohali (Rs 3.89 crore) actually belonged to him. He admitted to having generated the money through mining-related activities, including clearance of mining files and transfer of officials,” the ED had said.

The agency has also informed the court that digital devices, including mobile phones, recovered from Honey contain around 18 lakh pages of data.