SRINAGAR: Hours after the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) announced not to attend the meeting with the Delimitation Commission which arrived in Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday on a four-day visit, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) summoned party president and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti’s mother for questioning on July 14 in a money laundering case.
The summons to Mehbooba’s mother Gulshan Nazir was issued by ED assistant director Sunil Kumar Meena. She has been asked to appear at ED’s zonal office at Rajbagh in Srinagar at 11 am on July 14. In case she fails to appear, she would be liable to penal proceedings under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002 (15 of 2003), the summons warned.
Alleging witchhunt , Mehbooba tweeted, “On the day PDP chose not to meet the Delimitation Commission, ED sent summons to my mother to appear in person for unknown charges. In its attempts to intimidate political opponents, GoI doesn’t even spare senior citizens.
Agencies like NIA & ED are now its tools to settle scores.” While the summons sent to Nazir did provide any details of the case in which has been called for questioning, officials said it was in connection with a criminal case filed under PMLA which is to the recovery of at least two diaries by the ED following raids on an alleged associate of Mehbooba.
The diaries contain details of some purported payments made from the chief minister’s discretionary fund in alleged contravention of rules, allegedly during PDP’s rule, officials said. A few lakh rupees from these funds are alleged to have been transferred into the accounts of Nazir and some others, the officials said. Earlier in the morning, the PDP had announced not to meet the Delimitation Commission saying it lacks constitutional and legal mandate and that the outcome of exercise is pre-planned.