New Delhi:The Enforcement Directorate Saturday arrested Punjab Cabinet minister Sanjeev Arora on charges of money laundering, following a series of raids, including at his official residence in Chandigarh, sources in the agency told ThePrint.
This money laundering case is an offshoot of the ED’s case against Arora under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, for which the agency raided Arora’s residential premises in Ludhiana last month, agency sources said.
Last month’s recoveries showed that Arora, through his company, made fake mobile phone purchases worth more than Rs 100 crore, the sources added.
Arora allegedly carried out round-tripping of funds from Dubai to India, disguised as exports, to launder illegitimate funds.
“Incriminating details such as multiple fake GST purchase bills were recovered during the raids last month. These bills were obtained from non-existent firms in Delhi to claim fake ITC, refunds on GST export credits, and duty drawbacks,” an ED official said.
Sanjeev Arora, a former member of the Rajya Sabha, has held key portfolios, including Industries, Investment Promotion, and NRI Affairs, since his induction into Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s cabinet in Punjab. He was further elevated to the power department within a month of assuming office.
The fresh wave of raids by the ED has drawn sharp criticism from Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and other top political leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party. AAP has accused the BJP of weaponising central agencies—a claim that other Opposition-ruled states have also made.
Calling the ED, CBI, Income Tax Department, and Election Commission “tools” for the BJP’s politics, Mann pointed out that such raids had taken place against governments in states such as Odisha, Maharashtra, and Punjab.
“The intention and aim of the ED’s action are not to unearth black money or documents but just to ask them to join the BJP,” Mann said at a press conference held in Sangrur during his Shukrana rally.
Referring to the series of raids against his cabinet colleague Arora, the chief minister said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah should understand that such tactics would not work in Punjab.
“They have raided Arora thrice in a short time. They did not find anything then, and they won’t find anything again,” Mann asserted.
Arora’s firm, Hampton Sky Realty, faced ED action in a separate money laundering case in October 2024, when the agency raided its premises as part of a probe into alleged fraudulent change of land use for parcels the Punjab government had allotted for industrial purposes. The agency alleged that the Punjab government allotted industrial land to Hampton Sky Realty and Arora-linked Royal Industries with certain conditions, but the firms wrongfully sold the land, breaching those conditions without government approval.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)