SC rejects NCP leader Nawab Malik’s plea for release

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik’s plea to release him from jail in a money laundering case. “It is too nascent a stage to interfere with the investigation. We can’t interfere with the due process at this stage. You [should] move the competent court,” the top court said in its remarks.

The NCP leader was arrested in February in a case linked to Dawood Ibrahim, the mastermind of 1993 Mumbai blasts. Earlier the Bombay High Court had rejected the application by the minister.

The ruling Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance in Maharashtra – in an attack on the BJP – has been claiming that the NCP leader’s arrest in the investigation by the central probe agency was “politics of vendetta”.

Earlier on Thursday, the Enforcement Directorate submitted a 5,000-page chargesheet in a Mumbai court. The special court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) cases will take cognisance of the charge-sheet after verification of the documents, news agency PTI reported, citing the probe agency’s lawyers.

The case is based on an FIR filed recently by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) against Dawood Ibrahim and his aides under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

Malik, the ED has alleged, funded a prominent member of ‘D-Gang’ (Dawood gang) for illegal occupation of a property.

Last week, the ED had provisionally attached eight properties belonging to Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik and his family members.

The attached properties, according to the agency, belonged to Malik, his family members and family-owned firms Solidus Investments and Malik Infrastructure. The properties include the Goawala Compound, a commercial unit and three flats at Kurla west, two more flats in Bandra west and 147 acres of agricultural land in Osmanabad district.