LI Network
Published on: 26 December 2022 at 18:18 IST
Supreme Court bench of Justice S K Kaul and Justice Abhay S Oka has sought the response of the Enforcement Directorate to a plea filed by suspended IAS officer Pooja Singhal in a money laundering case seeking interim bail to look after her daughter who is ill.
Court said that, “Issue notice returnable in the re-opening miscellaneous week of January, 2023 both in the SLP as well as on the application for interim bail,”.
“In the meantime, the respondent is directed to verify the medical status of the daughter of the petitioner,”.
During the hearing, the counsel appearing on behalf of Singhal submitted his client’s daughter needs to be looked after due to a medical condition and sought bail on that ground.
Supreme Court asked the anti-money laundering probe agency to verify the condition of her daughter and inform the bench. Court was hearing an appeal filed by Singhal, a Jharkhand cadre Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, against the Jharakhand high court order dismissing her bail plea.
Singhal has been in custody since May 11 after raids were conducted at properties linked to her.
The Enforcement Directorate has accused Singhal, a former state mines department secretary, of money laundering.
ED submitted to the Court that more than ₹ 36 crore cash, linked to alleged illegal mining, was seized by its teams as part of two separate money laundering investigations.
Apart from the 2000-batch IAS officer, her businessman husband, a chartered accountant associated with the couple and others were also raided by the ED as part of a money laundering probe linked to a case of alleged corruption in the MGNREGA scheme.
Singhal was suspended by the state government following her arrest.
Suman Kumar, a chartered accountant linked to Singhal and her husband, was also arrested by the agency and cash totalling ₹ 19.76 crore was seized from him.