NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday carried out raids at five premises across Delhi as part of a money laundering investigation into the 2021 Mundra port drugs haul case, officials said.
The agency raided the premises of Delhi-based businessman Harpreet Singh Talwar alias Kabir Talwar, a man named Shamshudeen and some others under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), ED officials said.
Talwar, who runs popular nightclubs in Delhi, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency in the case in August 2022 and recently came out of prison after being granted bail by the Gujarat HC.
The ED had registered the money laundering case in 2021 and the latest searches are being conducted on the basis of new inputs, including allegations that narcotics trafficking proceeds were invested in some nightclubs in Delhi.
In one of the biggest drug seizures in the world, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence had seized 2,988.21 kg of Afghan-origin heroin from Mundra port in the Kutch district of Gujarat in September 2021. The consignment, worth approximately Rs 21,000 crore in the international illegal drugs market, reached Indian shores via Iran, disguised as semi-processed talc stones.
The NIA, which had separately investigated the case, had said in its chargesheet that the proceeds from the drugs network were used to fund activities of Pakistan-based banned terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba. The agency had described the consignment as a test case of smuggling a narco shipment into India under the cover of legal imports.
The case had triggered a multi-agency probe involving the DRI, ED and NIA, with investigators tracing a web of shell companies and intermediaries spread across multiple states, including a Vijayawada-based firm whose owner was later named as an accused in the NIA chargesheet.
The ED is looking into financial trail left behind by the massive drugs operation. The investigators are examining bank statements, property documents and digital records seized from the raided premises to establish links between the nightclub business and the alleged laundering of drug money.
