Bombay HC to hear ED plea against Sanjay Raut’s bail today

The Bombay High Court on Friday will hear a plea by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against the bail granted to Shiv Sena (Udhav) leader Sanjay Raut by a special court in a money laundering case linked to a redevelopment project of Mumbai’s Patra Chawl. The special court had granted bail to Raut and his alleged aide Pravin Raut on November 14 and rapped the ED for the “illegal arrest” in its order. Raut was arrested on August 1 and had been lodged at Arthur Road jail.

The case relates to Patra Chawl’s redevelopment, in which the ED has claimed that instead of providing houses for displaced residents, directors of infrastructure company HDIL and others cheated them.Sanjay Raut, in his bail plea, had said that the case against him was to “crush the Opposition faced by the ruling party”. His plea cited the amount Rs 1.06 crore and showed transactions to claim that the money was accounted for and therefore, cannot be linked to money laundering. The case dates back to March 2018 when a First Information Report was registered under the provision of prevention of money-laundering act against M/s Guru Ashish Construction, Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited’s (HDIL) promoters Rakesh and Sarang Wadhwan on the basis of a complaint filed by an executive engineer of Maharashtra Housing and Area Development (MHADA).