Bank froze my account based on news report of ED case: TMC MP Saket Gokhale
“Accounts of Opposition get frozen illegally only because there’s a ‘news article’ about a 2-year-old case,” tweets TMC spokesperson
Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP and RTI activist Saket Gokhale has alleged that HDFC Bank has frozen his account because of a two-year-old court case involving the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
Gokhale took to X to share his experience. He said he got a call from the bank saying his account had suddenly been blocked. When he asked them the reason, they allegedly said they “saw the article and blocked the account since it says ED”.
He said he asked them whether they had got any orders to block his account. To that, the bank reportedly replied that it had no such order, but “since the ED is involved”, they “saw the news and blocked the account”.
“Terrorism unleashed by ED”
“This is the level of terrorism unleashed by the ED under [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi. Accounts of Opposition get frozen illegally only because there’s a ‘news article’ about a 2-year-old case,” the TMC spokesperson wrote.
“Is randomly blocking bank accounts of the Opposition based on ‘news articles’ the new way of silencing us?” he added.
One user commented that it could be a fraudulent call. To that, Gokhale replied that had had personally verified the matter and it was not a fraud. “It was from the branch manager and my account is indeed suddenly frozen,” he replied to the user.
There was no immediate statement from the bank in this regard though it replied from an X handle asking the MP to share his registered contact number for them to check “what went wrong”.
The PMLA case
Gokhale was arrested in Delhi in December 2022 for allegedly misusing money collected through crowdfunding.
The ED had told the court that “huge amounts of money collected through crowdfunding by Gokhale have been squandered on speculative share trading, dining, and other personal expenses, which appear to be extravagant in nature”.
Gokhale has denied the allegations. In the latest development in the case, a special PMLA court in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad framed criminal charges against him under the anti-money laundering law earlier this month.
