A special Prevention of Money laundering Act (PMlA) court in Delhi has attached over Rs 1.23 crore assets and cash of an alleged drug kingpin from Punjab on charges of laundering huge cash sums generated from illegal trade of narcotics.
This is one of the rare cases where agencies have cracked on the illegal narcotic trade and its funds under the stringent provisions of the Prevention of Money laundering Act (PMlA), 2002. Alleged peddler Ranjit Singh Kandola is at present in judicial custody as he has been charged by various special units of Punjab and Delhi police for crimes under Indian Penal Code (IPC), Arms Act and anti-narcotics laws.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) in September last year, had seized 10 immovable properties in the name of Kandola in Punjab which includes vast tracts of agricultural lands and Rs 2,26,252 cash in a bank account in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (Nawanshahr) district of the state.
The charge sheets filed by probe agencies stated that Kandola “along with other accused formed a group to smuggle narcotics drugs, who supplied methamphetamine (called Ice popularly) and manufactured heroine (drugs) and supplied the same in Jalandhar, other parts of Punjab, big cities of India and also to foreign countries”.