The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has booked suspended Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor Tahir Hussain, Popular Front of India (PFI) and some others on the charges of money laundering and alleged funding of last month's communal riots in North-east Delhi, officials said here on Wednesday.
They said the agency has filed a criminal case against Hussain, facing charges of killing an Intelligence Bureau official during the riots, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Similar charges have been pressed against the PFI, which is already facing a separate PMLA probe for allegedly fuelling protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in various parts of the country. The ED is expected to seek Hussain's custody to question him in the PMLA case. Hussain is currently in the custody of Delhi Police in connection with the IB official's murder case.
The ED has taken cognisance of a clutch of FIRs filed by Delhi Police's Crime Branch to probe the alleged money laundering and routing of illegal funds by Hussain, PFI and others to purportedly sponsor the communal riots which claimed 44 lives and injured over 200 persons, officials said. Hussain, an AAP corporator for ward number 59 under the Mustafabad Assembly seat in Delhi, was booked by the police in the murder case of IB staffer Ankit Sharma during the communal riots in North-east Delhi late last month.
The family of Sharma (26), found dead in a drain near his home in riot-hit Chand Bagh area, has accused Hussain of being involved in his killing. The PFI was already being probed by the ED for allegedly routing about Rs 120 crore funds to fuel anti-CAA riots in the country and the agency has questioned about half-a-dozen of its office bearers over the last fortnight and the outfit's alleged role in funding the Delhi riots is under the scanner, they said.
The PFI and associated organisations are originally being probed by ED as part of a 2018 ECIR (enforcement case information report), FIR in police parlance. However, the PFI has in the past denied any wrongdoing.