The Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided seven premises linked to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Amandeep Kaur Arora and her family in Punjab on Wednesday as part of a money-laundering probe into the alleged fraudulent acquisition of Government land and related irregularities.
ED teams, with ARCF personnel in attendance, began search operations early in the morning at various locations in Moga (including Arora’s residence in Arora and a flat in Icon Heights). The legislator (a doctor and president of the AAP’s Punjab Women’s Wing) was at her residence during the operation. The homes of her family members, associates and a de-addiction hospital linked to her husband, Dr Rakesh Arora, were also searched.
The PMLA probe stems from an FIR registered by the Punjab Police at the Dharamkot police station on June 16, 2024. The FIR was filed on allegations that government land acquired for National Highway No. 754A had been fraudulently mutated.
The FIR alleged that compensation had been paid to the wrong person in Moga. The FIR named a revenue officer (patwari) and an associate under sections for criminal conspiracy, cheating and forgery. Arora was not an accused in the original police complaint.
According to ED sources, the probe has widened to look at the alleged fraudulent acquisition and ‘snatching’ of around six land parcels in Moga (including one belonging to the APMC). The agency is now tracing the money trail related to irregularities in the land records and the compensation claims that have come up in the context of the highway project.
Arora, a first-time MLA elected from Moga in 2022, has been renominated by the AAP as its candidate from Moga for the Punjab Assembly elections (expected in early 2027). She is on the party’s first list of 40 for the 2027 polls.
After the raids, AAP workers gathered outside her house and shouted slogans, accusing the central agency of being the BJP’s hand in trying to pressure the MLA ahead of the elections. The party leadership said it was part of a wider pattern of the central agency going after MLAs from the ruling party in the state.
The ED said the operation was in the context of the PMLA case registered under the 2024 police FIR. The searches went on all day at various places in the district.
The case centres on alleged irregularities in the mutation of government land acquired for the national highway and the subsequent disbursement of compensation to ineligible beneficiaries. Local revenue inquiries had earlier flagged forged records linked to the compensation claim, leading to the police complaint that formed the basis of the ED’s money-laundering probe.