NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday gave an oral assurance to the Delhi High Court it will not execute till January 9 a warrant to produce here Trinamool Congress leader Anubrata Mondal, lodged in an Asansol jail in a cattle smuggling case in West Bengal, in a money laundering case.
Following the assurance, Justice Jasmeet Singh listed for January 9, 2023, a plea by Mondal challenging a Delhi trial court’s order for producing him before it. ‘Renotify on January 9, till then you will not execute it,’ the judge said.
At the outset, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi and lawyer Mudit Jain, representing Mondal, said if the ED makes a statement that it will not execute the production warrant, for now, the court may list the plea in January.
The ED’s counsel said he will send a mail to the jail authorities of Asansol for not executing the production warrant as of now and a copy of it will be shown to the court. Earlier in the day, the plea came up before Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani who transferred it to the court of Justice Singh as Mondal’s counsel submitted that other connected matters are pending before him. Citing urgency, the counsel had urged the court to list it before Justice Singh for Wednesday itself. The prayer was allowed.
Mondal has challenged the production warrant issued by a court in the national capital on December 19 on a plea by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). Mondal, the TMC’s Birbhum district president and a close aide to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, was arrested by the CBI in the case on August 11. According to the ED, it registered the money laundering case following an FIR by the CBI in Kolkata against Satish Kumar, the then Commandant of the BSF.
The CBI FIR alleged that Mondal, along with Kumar, other public servants and private persons, was involved in the multi-crore cattle smuggling racket.