The Enforcement Directorate has attached bank deposits to the tune of over Rs 1.77 crore of journalist Rana Ayyub in connection with a money-laundering probe against her linked to alleged irregularities in charitable funds raised from public donors, agency sources said on Thursday.
In the evening, Ayyub, a trenchant critic of the Narendra Modi government, tweeted while uploading an article on the challenges faced by journalists: “When the government of the day unleashes all its agencies against journalists targeting their reputation as a response to their journalism, how will journalists survive. By continuing to speak the truth.”
In a short introduction to the article titled “As I was saying”, Ayyub wrote: “A weeks-long campaign of harassment and threats, egged on by sitting politicians, has failed to stop me from writing this piece, and the next one, and the one after that.”
The ED had issued a provisional order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach fixed deposits to the tune of Rs 50 lakh and the rest of the amount kept as bank deposits in two accounts of a private bank in Navi Mumbai. Ayyub is the account holder and deposits totalling Rs 1,77,27,704 have been attached by the ED.
The money-laundering case against Ayyub was filed after taking cognisance of a September 2021 FIR lodged with Ghaziabad police in Uttar Pradesh related to alleged irregularities in donor funds of over Rs 2.69 crore raised by her through an online crowd-funding platform.
The police lodged the case on a complaint by Vikas Sankrityayan, founder of an NGO called the Hindu IT Cell and a resident of Indirapuram in Ghaziabad.
Ayyub had then stated that the “entire donation received through (the platform) is accounted for and not a single paisa has been misused”.
According to the FIR, the funds were raised as part of three campaigns: funds for slum dwellers and farmers during April-May 2020; relief work for Assam, Bihar and Maharashtra during June-September 2020; and help for people affected by Covid in India during May-June 2021.
“Funds totalling Rs 2,69,44,680 were raised on (the platform) by Rana Ayyub. These funds were withdrawn in the bank accounts of her sister and father,” the agency said.
Out of this amount, Rs 72,01,786 was withdrawn in her own bank account, Rs 37,15,072 withdrawn in her sister Iffat Shaikh’s account, and Rs 1,60,27,822 was withdrawn in her father Mohd Ayyub Waquif’s bank account, the ED said.
All the funds, the ED found, were subsequently “transferred” to Ayyub’s own account.
Ayyub had submitted documents of expense for Rs 31,16,770 to the ED. However, after verification of the claimed expenses, the agency found that the actual expenses were to the tune of Rs 17,66,970, the agency stated.
