Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir High Court (HC) order quashing the money laundering case filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah is a shot in the arm for the veteran politician ahead of the Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections due to be held in September.
“I find merit in the plea of the learned counsel for the petitioner. The complaint, the chargesheet and the charges framed by the designated Special Court (Principal Sessions Court, Srinagar) vide order dated 18.03.2020 are quashed,” a single HC bench of Justice Sanjeev Kumar observed on Wednesday (August 14).
Political observers believe that the HC’s ruling could give credence to the allegations that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government weaponised the country’s federal agencies such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and ED to silence its political detractors.
The ED turned the heat on 86-year-old Abdullah soon after it filed a money laundering chargesheet in 2019 for alleged financial irregularities in the functioning of Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association (JKCA).
The house of the NC chief located in an upscale residential colony of the winter capital Jammu was seized and he was summoned and questioned several times in the case.
While Abdullah skipped the ED summons on some occasions, he has maintained all along that the case was a political witch-hunt against him for his stance on Jammu and Kashmir and his party’s refusal to accept the BJP government’s decision of bifurcating Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories.
The HC ruling will now provide a boost to the NC at a time when Jammu and Kashmir is heading for the assembly elections and Omar Abdullah, the party’s vice-president and senior-most leader after his father, has announced that he was going to stay out of the race until the statehood of J&K is restored.
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Omar fought the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections from Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency in north Kashmir but he suffered a surprising defeat at the hands of the firebrand leader of Awami Ittehad Party, Engineer Rashid.
With Abdullah limping into the nineties, his son and party heir’s loss to Rashid was seen by observers as a major setback for the NC which is expected to put up a good show in the assembly elections.
Following the directions of the Supreme Court, which has called for holding the J&K assembly election by the end of September, a team led by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar visited the Union Territory last week to review the poll preparations.
The commission also held a meeting with the union home secretary Ajay Bhalla on Wednesday to review the security preparations for the elections. According to reports, the commission is likely to announce the poll schedule next week.
Senior Abdullah recently made his intention of contesting the assembly election clear and, with the ghost of JKCA partially behind him, the party is also likely to project him as its chief ministerial candidate.
The money laundering case against Abdullah and others dates back to March 10, 2012 when the J&K Police acted on a complaint of JKCA chairman Muhammad Aslam Goni and opened a probe against two JKCA officials — Ahsan Mirza, JKCA’s general secretary and chief administrative officer Mohammad Saleem Khan — for alleged misappropriation of funds.
The case was later transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) by a Kashmir court in 2012 for a thorough investigation and the agency filed a chargesheet against Abdullah and others in 2018 in the court of chief judicial magistrate in Srinagar.
In 2019, the ED opened a separate probe into the case and alleged that the JKCA had opened unofficial bank accounts into which tens of crores of grants received from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and others from 2005 to 2011 for the development of cricket in J&K were siphoned off.
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Abdullah was the president of JKCA from 2001 to 2011 and the ED has alleged that “there was variation in the two sets of balance sheets of around Rs 10 crore for the financial years 2007-08, 2008-09, and 2009-10,” according to a report published on The Hindu.
Abdullah has admitted that the accounts were opened to repay the money Mirza had lent the association because a court in Kashmir had frozen JKCA accounts back in 2006. “The association had to take an interest-free loan of Rs 1.91 crore for work. This money was paid back,” Abdullah told a TV network at that time.
The ED case followed a CBI charge sheet against Abdullah, Mirza and others for allegedly misappropriating Rs 43.69 crore BCCI grants. The NC had challenged the ED case in the high court which delivered its judgement on Wednesday.
Quashing the ED chargesheet, the high court observed that the CBI has already probed the case and the ED would not be allowed to step into the jurisdiction of the Srinagar court where the CBI has filed its chargesheet.
However, the court noted that the ED may proceed with its case to prosecute Abdullah and others under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act if charges are framed against them by the Srinagar court.
