The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned Punjab Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia to appear before it on December 26 in connection with alleged money laundering in the Rs6,000-crore drug racket case.
Majithia is also the president of Youth Wing of SAD and younger brother of Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, the wife of Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal. The ED, a specialised financial investigation agency under the Union Finance Ministry, has been interrogating those involved in the international drug racket, which was busted with the arrest of an NRI, Anoop Singh Kahlon, by the Fatehgarh Sahib police in March 2013. Subsequent, investigation had led to the arrest of alleged kingpin Jagdish Bhola, a dismissed DSP of Punjab Police, in November last year.
Majithia’s name had first surfaced in the case when the alleged kingpin in the racket, Jagdish Singh Bhola, who is also an international wrestler, claimed that the youth Akali leader and Damanvir Singh, who was the son of the then Punjab Jail Minister, Swaran Singh Phillaur, had assisted him in procuring synthetic chemicals and precursors from owners of pharmaceutical units in Himachal Pradesh and Punjab. The issue had then gained political trajectory and while the Opposition Congress had used it to attack the Badals, it had forced the BJP to distance itself from the Akalis.