ED attaches Rs 1.94 cr Delhi farmhouse in OP Chautala DA case
New Delhi: The ED has attached a Delhi farmhouse worth Rs 1.94 crore of former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala under provisions of PMLA in a disproportionate assets case, the agency said on Friday.
The Enforcement Directorate had initiated its investigation based on a disproportionate assets case registered by the CBI, where the former CM had allegedly amassed over Rs 6 crore in assets, disproportionate to his known sources of income.
The CBI investigation in the case revealed that between 1993 and 2006, in addition to Chautala himself, his sons Abhay Singh Chautala and Ajay Singh Chautala also continued to gather assets to the tune of Rs 119.6 crore and Rs 27.7 crore respectively, which was disproportionate to their known sources of income.
The ED said that its investigation further revealed that Chautala had acquired properties in New Delhi and Panchkula and also
constructed a residential home in Sirsa, Haryana with money received from undisclosed sources.
The agency has further accused Chautala of being directly involved in the acquisitions and that he had publicly presented these properties as untainted while declaring them in his election affidavit for Haryana Assembly elections in 2005 and 2009.
With this latest attachment, the ED has successfully attached Chautala's properties amounting to the total proceeds of crime in the case.
In April this year, the ED had attached properties worth Rs 3.68 crore belonging Chautala in Delhi, Panchkula, and Sirsa, whereas, in 2013, the agency had attached another of Chautala's properties.
The agency had filed the first chargesheet in the case against the former Haryana CM in July 2017 and this year filed a supplementary chargesheet.
Chautala and his son Ajay are currently serving a 10-year jail term in a teacher-recruitment scam. The father-son duo was convicted by a trial court along with 53 others, including two IAS officers.
While the Chautalas had appealed the trial court verdict twice, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India had both upheld the trial court's conviction in the case.
