New Delhi: Almost 20 days after Delhi Police named suspended AAP councilor Tahir Hussain in the Delhi riots case, the Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday carried out searches at six locations in connection with its probe in a money laundering case against him.
An ED source said, “Multiple teams of the agency are carrying out searches at six locations in the National Capital Region (NCR) related to Hussain.”
The source said that the financial probe agency teams are carrying out searches at four locations in northeast Delhi and two locations in Noida. The source said that the raids were carried out at Hussain’s Khajuri Khas residence and at companies allegedly controlled by his wife and children.
The source also disclosed that the four-story building in Khajuri Khas is owned by Hussain and houses the office of Show Effect Advertisement Private Limited. According to ED, the suspended AAP leader is also the director of two more companies – Show Effect Worldwide Private Limited and Essence Cellcom Private Limited.
The ED action comes almost three weeks after it registered a case of money laundering against Hussain, who is currently in judicial custody. The ED had registered a case against Hussain and the PFI for money laundering and funding of riots in Delhi.
A senior ED official wishing not to be named said, “We have filed a case of money laundering against Hussain and PFI.” The official said that Hussain and PFI have been booked under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The PFI is already facing a case from the central financial probe agency for their alleged role in the funding of the anti-CAA protests across the country. The ED has taken cognizance of the number of FIRs filed by the Delhi Police Crime Branch to probe the alleged money laundering and routing of illegal funds by Hussain, PFI, and others to purportedly sponsor the communal riots that killed over 52 people in the last week of February in northeast Delhi.
The ED is probing the funding and source of income that Hussain allegedly received for ‘inciting’ violence in Delhi. After Delhi’s violence, role of Hussain was found dubious as from his house the police recovered several petrol bombs as well as the acid pouches. His house in the Khajuri Khas area of northeast Delhi was also used for stone-pelting and hurling petrol bombs during the violence.
On June 2, the Delhi Police filed two charge sheets in this connection. The charge sheets have been filed in the Karkardooma court by the Crime Branch.
Three special investigation teams were constituted to investigate the cases registered during the riots. First charge sheet has been filed against Hussain under the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, the Indian Penal Code and the Arms Act. Fifteen persons, including Hussain, were arrested in this case. The investigation has revealed that there was a “deep-rooted conspiracy” to cause riots in northeast Delhi.
Delhi Police in its second charge sheet filed in the murder of Intelligence Bureau staffer Ankit Sharma during the Delhi riots has claimed that Hussain was “leading the mob from his house and also from the Masjid near Chand Bagh Pulia giving it a communal color” and that his location near “the spot where the IB staffer was brutally murdered on February 25 speaks of his evil intentions which ended with the murder.”
