Jammu, Nov 8: A day after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) detained former Jammu and Kashmir minister Lal Singh in connection with a money laundering case, a judge in this city remanded Singh to the agency’s custody for seven days. A special court denied Singh’s appeal for anticipatory bail, and he was taken into custody from his home in the Chawadi neighbourhood of Sainik Colony on Tuesday night. Singh is the chairman of the Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan Party (DSSP).The Enforcement Directorate was looking into Singh in relation to a case involving an educational trust that his wife, the former lawmaker Kanta Andotra, was running. The arrested accused was shown before the special court, according to special public prosecutor Ashwani Khajuria, who gave the ED a seven-day remand instead of the 14 days that the agency had requested. According to Khajuria, who quoted the decision, the special judge noted the accused’s statement of physical discomfort and requested that he get a proper medical examination. Singh complained of being uneasy, according to officials, and was moved to the Government Medical College (GMC) Hospital in the early hours of the day.At approximately 3 p.m., he was escorted directly to the court after being released from the hospital. Singh, however, said that despite being brought to the hospital, he did not receive the necessary medical attention. “Even though I was at the hospital’s emergency room, I was not given the proper medical attention, and numerous tests were not completed and my admit paperwork was not produced. As he was carried to the court, he informed reporters, “They have forced the physicians to state that I refused to get a CT scan. A large number of his fans had gathered outside the hospital in front of the Lok Sabha elections the following year, chanting anti-BJP chants and alleging that their leader was being set up in a bogus case.Singh, a three-time MLA and two-time MP, joined the BJP in 2014 after leaving the Congress. He served as a minister in the PDP-BJP cabinet that fell apart in June 2018 due to the national party’s withdrawal from the coalition. A few months prior to the collapse of the government, Singh announced his resignation from the BJP and founded the DSSP due to controversy over his involvement in a demonstration endorsing the defendants in the January 2018 rape and killing of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua.He justified his attendance at the demonstration, nevertheless, by saying that his goal was to “defuse the situation.” In an effort to investigate possible money laundering related to anomalies in the property transaction that resulted in the establishment of Andotra’s educational trust and the involvement of a former government official, the Enforcement Directorate searched Jammu and its surrounding districts last month. On October 17, the federal agency raided approximately eight locations in Jammu, Kathua, and Pathankot, Punjab, in connection with a lawsuit brought against the head of the RB Educational Trust and a former revenue official named Ravinder S.The Jammu and Kashmir Agrarian Reforms Act, 1976 imposes a ceiling limit of 100 standard kanals. The money laundering case stems from an October 2021 charge sheet filed by the CBI in this case, which alleged criminal connivance in the issuance of land between January 4 and January 7, 2011, without mentioning details about violation of the act, thereby giving undue pecuniary advantage to trust. According to the CBI charge sheet, the trust used this information to purchase several parcels of land totaling roughly 329 kanals through the execution of three gift deeds on January 5 and January 7, 2011.
