The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested alleged conman Sukesh Chandrashekhar in a fresh money laundering case linked to duping former Religare promoter Malvinder Singh's wife by posing as Union home and law secretaries.
Chandrashekhar, 33, was taken into custody under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) from a local jail on Thursday evening and a Delhi court later sent him to nine-day ED custody.
The federal probe agency had sought 14-day custody of the alleged conman from the court of Additional Sessions Judge Shailender Malik.
Chandrashekhar's lawyer Anant Malik told the court that custodial interrogation of his client was not required as the case was registered in September 2021 and he had been called to unearth the money trail in the case at a "belated stage".
This is the third money laundering case in which the ED has arrested Chandrashekhar. The other two cases relate to Chandrashekar allegedly duping Aditi Singh, the wife of Malvinder Singh's brother Shivinder Singh, of Rs 200 crore and to purported bribing of Election Commission officials to get the AIADMK's 'two leaves' symbol for the V K Sasikala faction.
The latest PMLA case stems from a Delhi Police Special Cell FIR of 2021 which accuses Chandrashekhar and his alleged associates of hatching a criminal conspiracy by impersonating high-ranking government officers and extorting Rs 4 crore from Malvinder Singh's wife Japna Singh.
Malvinder Singh is currently lodged in jail in a case against him linked to alleged misappropriation of funds at Religare Finvest Limited (RFL).
Japna Singh had told police that she made a payment of Rs 3.5 crore in a Hong Kong-based account and another Rs 50 lakh to the PM CARES Fund for the "safety" of her jailed husband after she received a "fake" call. The caller claimed to be calling from the office of Union Law Secretary Anoop Kumar Mendiratta.
Mendiratta is now a Delhi High Court judge.
"The caller also told Mrs Japna that he was speaking with the express authority of the Home Ministry (including the Honourable Home Minister and the Home Secretary Mr Ajay Kumar Bhalla). The caller said that the aforesaid persons are willing to help her in ensuring the safety of her husband in custody if she co-operates with them," the ED said in its remand note presented to the court.
The agency said Japna Singh later read news reports that Chandrasekhar was an inmate of Tihar Jail and had allegedly hatched a criminal conspiracy with his two aides, Deepak Ramnani and Pradeep Ramdani, to cheat and defraud an amount of about Rs 190-200 crore from several people by impersonating senior government officials.
"It was then that she realised that she too had become a victim of the aforesaid scam perpetrated by Sukesh Chandrasekhar and his aides/associates," the ED stated.
The agency said it wanted Chandrashekhar's custody to unearth the "deep-rooted conspiracy hatched by him".
The ED, in the PMLA case related to Aditi Singh, has questioned Bollywood actors Jacqueline Fernandez, Nora Fatehi and some models saying that the money Chandrashekhar extorted from her was shared with these celebrities and this money was nothing but "proceeds of the crime of money laundering".
The ED had said that "Chandrasekhar is the mastermind of this fraud and has been part of the crime world since the age of 17. He has multiple FIRs (registered) against him...." Despite being in jail, it said, Chandrashekhar "did not stop conning" people.
"He (using a cellphone procured illegally in prison), with the help of technology, made spoofed calls to dupe people as the numbers displayed on the called party's phone number belonged to senior government officers.
"While speaking (from prison) to these persons, he claimed to be a government officer offering to help people for a price," the ED had claimed.
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