New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Thursday searched around a dozen locations in Chandigarh and Mohali, including the premises of an alleged associate of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s Officer on Special Duty (OSD), in connection with a money laundering case linked to allegedly fraudulent land deals.
Agency sources identified the suspect as Nitin Gohal, who they alleged was linked to Mann’s OSD, Rajbir Sinigh Ghuman.
They added that Gohal was using his connections in the government to provide “liaisoning and political support to defaulters” to builders who defaulted on payments to the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA).
Agency officials also conducted searches at premises in Chandigarh and Mohali linked to the Suntec City real estate project, including Ajay Sehgal, the secretary of the Indian Cooperative Housing Building Society, in Mullanpur, as well as real estate companies such as ABS Townships, Altus Builders, Dhir Constructions, and their associates, allegedly involved in large-scale fraud in obtaining Change of Land Use (CLU) licences from GMADA and cheating the public to collect hundreds of crores, the sources said.
Shiromani Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia claimed in a post on X that “bags” of money were thrown from the apartment during the agency’s raids.
Major Breaking
👉 Crores of Money, 500 notes flying in Air. Money Belongs to whom— OSD CM Mann Rajbir' Singh
👉 "Kattar Fraudsters" in ED trap
👉ED raids on CM Bhagwant Mann’s close aide OSD Rajbir' Ghumman's close aides and relatives Nitin, Veer davinder.
👉ED raids Mohali… pic.twitter.com/iZGBa5iixO
— Bikram Singh Majithia (@bsmajithia) May 7, 2026
AAP Punjab spokesperson Baltej Pannu denied any links or association between Gohal and Mann’s OSD. However, he refused to comment on the raids.
The agency’s money laundering probe stems from a case filed by the Punjab Police, following an inquiry into alleged forgery and the use of the land owners’ bogus signatures by office bearers of a real estate promoter, the Indian Cooperative Housing Building Society in Mullanpur, to obtain CLU licenses from GMADA for development and commercial purposes.
CLU licenses are required for the conversion of agricultural land for industrial, commercial, or residential purposes, particularly outside municipal limits.
The Punjab Police probe began after the Punjab and Haryana High Court asked the Punjab DGP and the Bureau of Investigation to file a report on complaints submitted by landowners alleging fraud worth Rs 2,500 crore through the fraudulent acquisition of land parcels for real estate development.
When the matter was pending in court, the Punjab Police conducted inquiries based on complaints filed by the landowners before the SAS Nagar SSP and found that the signatures of at least 14 landowners were forged. Based on the forged documents, consent letters were prepared in the names of the landowners in 2014.
The Punjab Police arrested Ajay Sehgal in 2022 after registering an FIR under sections related to forgery and cheating. Sehgal’s premises were also searched by the ED on Thursday.
GMADA had passed the Suntec City proposal on a 108-acre land parcel, which was subsequently approved by the state’s Real Estate Regulatory Authority in 2018.
However, GMADA revoked the promoter’s license to develop the land for real estate in July 2024, in the wake of criminal cases and complaints of forgery by the project’s promoters. The Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) also revoked its approval for the project in 2024.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)