ED attaches Chandigarh house of Punjab Cong MLA Khaira in drugs case

The Enforcement Directorate Tuesday said it has attached Punjab Congress MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira's house in Chandigarh worth Rs 3.82 crore as part of a probe into a drug trafficking-linked money laundering case against him and some others.

An order has been issued under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on March 8 to provisionally attach the property located in Sector 5 of Chandigarh, the federal agency said in a statement.

The asset is worth Rs 3.82 crore, it said.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) alleged Khaira "acquired and utilised" the proceeds of the crime to the tune of Rs 3.82 crore "generated" from an international drug syndicate operated by his "close associate" Gurdev Singh and his overseas-based associates.

Reacting to the development, Khaira took to X to say, "I've just learnt through media that ED has attached my Chandigarh residence about which I want to clarify that I have received no notice about this from ED or any other government source. Even if the news is correct I should have been notified instead of the news being released to the media."  "This is nothing but pure character assassination apart from the known fact that the BJP is misusing the ED to witch-hunt opposition leaders across India,' he added.

The 60-year-old politician won the assembly election in 2017 from the Bholath Assembly seat in Punjab's Kapurthala district on an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ticket.

He resigned from the primary membership of the Arvind Kejriwal-led party in January 2019 and floated his own outfit, the Punjab Ekta Party. He then rejoined the Congress and won the 2022 state polls from the Bholath seat.

The federal probe agency claimed, "In lieu of protection/passage provided for smuggling of narcotic drugs by Sukhpal Singh Khaira, Gurdev Singh provided cash payments of Rs 3.82 crore to Khaira and also funded his election campaigns out of the proceeds of crime derived from illegal drugs business."  The former MLA was arrested by the ED as part of his investigation in November 2011 and a chargesheet was filed against him and Gurdev Singh before a special PMLA court in Mohali in January 2022. The court framed charges in the case in October 2023.

According to the ED, Gurdev Singh served as the chairman of the market Committee in Kapurthala district's Dhilwan.

Between April 1, 2014 and March 31, 2020, Khaira and his family members spent Rs 6.61 crore apart from an "unaccounted" expenditure of Rs 3.82 crore which was "more than" their known sources of income, the agency said.

This was found after the ED seized "handwritten" notebooks during searches conducted in the case in March 2021.

The money laundering case stems from a Punjab Police FIR filed against Gurdev Singh and others. A local court in Punjab had convicted Singh and eight others on drug trafficking charges in 2017, according to the ED.