A Delhi court on Wednesday sent businessman Amit Arora to two-week judicial custody in connection with a money laundering probe into alleged irregularities in the Delhi excise policy case.
Special Judge N K Nagpal sent Arora, the director of Gurugram-based Buddy Retail Private Limited, to judicial custody till December 28 after he was produced before the court by the Enforcement Directorate on expiry of his 14-day custodial interrogation.
The court passed the order on an application moved by agency’s Special Public Prosecutor N K Matta, who said the accused was not required for further custody.
Arora was arrested by the ED under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). He is the sixth person to be arrested by the agency in this case.
The ED had told the court that Arora was involved in activity connected to the acquisition, possession and use of the proceeds of crime.
The federal agency said in its application moved through advocate Mohd Faizan Khan that its money laundering case stems from a CBI FIR.
The CBI, in its first charge sheet filed in the case last week, claimed that Arora, along with co-accused Dinesh Arora and Arjun Pandey, is a close associate of Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and the three were actively involved in "managing" and "diverting" the undue pecuniary advantage collected from liquor licensees for the accused public servants.
The ED also filed its first charge sheet (prosecution complaint) in the case last week, naming arrested businessman Sameer Mahandru, his company Indospirit, and a few other entities.
The CBI has also got Dinesh Arora to turn approver in the case. It had alleged that the Delhi government, with its policy to grant licences to liquor traders, favoured certain dealers who had allegedly paid bribes for it, a charge strongly refuted by the ruling AAP.
"It was further alleged that irregularities were committed in modifications in excise policy, extending undue favours to the licensee, waiver/reduction in licence fee and extension of L-1 licence without approval, etc.
"It was also alleged that illegal gains on count of these acts were diverted to concerned public servants by private parties by making false entries in their books of accounts," the CBI had said.
Besides Sisodia, who holds the excise portfolio in the Delhi government, the CBI had named the then excise commissioner Arava Gopi Krishna, the then deputy excise commissioner Anand Kumar Tiwari, assistant excise commissioner Pankaj Bhatnagar, nine businessmen, and two companies as accused in its FIR filed on August 17.
In its FIR, the agency has alleged that Sisodia and other accused public servants recommended and took decisions pertaining to the Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22 without the approval of the competent authority with an "intention to extend undue favours to the licensees post tender".