The ED custody of Punjab CM Charanjit Singh Channi’s nephew, Bhupinder Singh alias Honey, was extended for three more days on Tuesday. He was presented before the special ED court of Judge Rupinderjit Chahal and sent on remand till February 11 in a money laundering case linked to alleged illegal sand mining in the state.
Honey is the son of Channi’s sister-in-law. The ED sought extension of Honey’s custody from the court, saying it wanted to confront him with various documents.
In its application, the ED said that the digital devices including mobile phone recovered from Honey contained material of around 18 lakh pages out of which 20,000 pages have been analysed and rest are pending.
An agency can take an accused on remand maximum for 14 days except some exceptional case in which remand can be extended up to 28 days, said ED officials.
ED also mentioned that during the remand period, the accused was confronted with seized documents which revealed involvement in process of sand mining activity and allegedly huge cash being generated from illegal mining activities. Further, the ED alleged that Honey was in contact with various government officials of the state government working with sand mining activities.
Honey was represented in court by former Advocate General A P S Deol. He told the court that Honey was not directly connected with the money recovered and also his name was not there in the illegal sand mining FIR, that forms the basis of ED probe. He further said that the money was recovered from a rented accommodation, which did not belong to Honey, and the rooms were also locked.
The ED action began last month on January 18 after it conducted raids against Honey and others and seized about Rs 7.9 crore cash from his premises and another about Rs 2 crore cash from a linked person identified as Sandeep Kumar.
Honey, Kudratdeep Singh and Sandeep Kumar are stated to be the directors of a company called Providers Overseas Consultants Pvt Ltd that was raided by the ED last month in poll-bound Punjab.
The agency had said in a statement on Monday that it has recorded the statements of accused Kudratdeep Singh, Honey, Honey’s father Santokh Singh and Sandeep Kumar during the searches and it was “established” that the seized Rs 10 crore “belonged to Bhupinder Singh s/o Santokh Singh”.
“Further, Bhupinder Singh accepted that he received the seized cash in lieu of facilitation in sand mining operations and transfer/postings of officials,” the ED claimed. It said Honey was issued summons for his personal appearance before the agency on February 3 along with some documents.
“In response, he appeared and tendered his statement, wherein he, inter-alia, stated that he is involved in the mining-related activities, but took an evasive approach when confronted with incriminating data,” it said.
The money laundering case was filed by the ED in November last year after taking cognisance of a Punjab Police (Rahon police station, Shaheed Bhagat Singh (SBS) Nagar) FIR of 2018 that pressed charges under various sections of the IPC and that under the Mines and Minerals (Regulation of Development) Act, 1957 to probe allegations of illegal sand mining.
