Firebrand Dogra leader and supremo of the Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan Party (DSSP) Lal Singh was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate late Tuesday night in connection with a case against an educational trust run by his wife Kanta Andotra under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Singh was picked up by the sleuths of the Enforcement Directorate from the residence of a local contractor in the Sainik Colony area of Jammu.
Singh was currently out on bail. ED sleuths arrested him after Special Judge CBI Jammu Bala Joyti rejected his pre-arrest bail application while extending the bail application of Kanta Andotra and Dr. Kranti Singh up to November 30 in the same case.
ED had earlier raided his residence and other commercial establishments in Kathua district on October 17 in connection with the money laundering case.
Minutes after Singh, who remained a two-time Congress MP and three-time MLA in the J&K Assembly, was shifted to the ED office in Jammu, a large number of supporters along with his wife Kanta Andotra staged a protest demonstration outside the office building demanding his immediate release.
The supporters and his wife alleged Lal Singh was targeted as part of vendetta politics by the ruling dispensation.
Meanwhile, a high-voltage drama enfolded past midnight. Singh was rushed to the Government hospital in Gandhinagar after he complained of chest pain. From Gandhi Nagar, he was shifted to the Government Medical College Hospital. While Lal Singh was kept under observation to conduct mandatory laboratory tests several party workers alleged he was not provided proper treatment at the behest of ED officials. Singh himself told reporters that he was not given proper treatment by the doctors for reasons best known to them. Later, ED officials whisked him away from the hospital premises despite resistance from the DSSP workers.
It may be mentioned that CBI had registered the FIR against the R B Educational Trust for occupying a huge piece of land over and above the ceiling of standard 100 kanals (12.5 acres) fixed by the Jammu and Kashmir Government under provisions of the J&K Agrarian Reforms Act, 1976.
Nearly half a dozen retired and serving Revenue officials, who had allegedly helped the Trust get excess land in violation of the Agrarian Reforms Act, were also booked by the CBI.
The CBI later filed a charge sheet in the case in October 2021, alleging the involvement of accused revenue officials in criminal conspiracy with the R B Educational Trust through Kanta Andotra to allow it to retain land beyond the permissible ceiling of standard 100 kanals (12.5 acres).
To enable the R B Educational Trust to retain land beyond 100 kanals, the revenue officials allegedly showed 74.02 kanals (9.25 acres) as orchard and another 32 kanal (4 acres) was “gha charai” (grazing land), which did not come under the ceiling fixed under Agrarian Reforms Act.
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The Enforcement Directorate late Tuesday night arrested the supremo of Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan party Choudhary Lal Singh soon after the special CBI judge in Jammu rejected his pre-arrest bail application in a money laundering case.