The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday arrested Panchkula Special Court Judge Sudhir Parmar as part of a money laundering investigation against him linked to charges of alleged bribery, official sources said. The Former Judge was taken into custody under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) from Gurugram.
The ED is investigating the money laundering case linked to a corruption case registered by the Haryana Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) against the CBI Judge who was also holding the charge of special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court before he was suspended.
The ED received credible information that Sudhir Parmar was showing “favouritism” to the accused, namely Roop Kumar Bansal, his brother Basant Bansal and IREO’s Lalit Goyal in the criminal cases of the ED and other cases of the CBI pending against them in his court.
The ACB FIR stated that “as per reliable information, instances of grave misconduct, abuse of official position and demand and acceptance of undue advantage/bribe from the accused persons in the cases pending in his court were observed (in the judge case)”.
However, an application filed on July 6 by Parmar’s nephew, Ajay, in the Panchkula PMLA court calling for transcript of the audio recording and WhatsApp chat, said that the ECIR was not based on facts.
The application filed by Parmar’s nephew stated that the information, which is with the ACB, contains screenshots of WhatsApp chat between Sudhir Parmar and another person, through his own mobile phone as well as that of his nephew Ajay Parmar. In order to hype the case, the ACB alleged that ₹5-7 crore were demanded for helping the said owners of M3M in ED case. Allegations of giving favours to Lalit Goyal of IREO or any other person by Sudhir Parmar were false and based on presumptions. Lalit Goyal was produced before the court and remanded first to police custody first and then judicial custody. His bail application was also dismissed by Sudhir Parmar.
Parmar was suspended by the Punjab and Haryana High Court after the registration of the ACB case.
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