The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday arrested Shiv Sena leader and Maharashtra minister Sanjay Raut in a money laundering case linked to the alleged irregularities in the redevelopment of a Mumbai ‘chawl’.
Raut, 60, was arrested after over six hours of questioning at the ED’s zonal office in south Mumbai’s Ballard Estate.
The Rajya Sabha MP of the Sena, led by former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, was produced before a special PMLA court in Mumbai later in the day, where the ED sought his custody. The session court sent Raut to ED custody till August 4 but the ED had sought eight days’ custody.
The ED probe pertains to alleged financial irregularities in the redevelopment of Patra ‘chawl’ and related financial property transactions involving his wife and alleged associates.
What is the Patra Chawl scam?
Siddharth Nagar, popularly known as Patra Chawl is an area located in Goregaon, a northern Mumbai suburb. It housed nearly 672 homes spread over 47 acres of land.
In 2008, the Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority (MHDA) handed over the project of redeveloping the Chawl to Guru Ashish Construction Private Limited (GACPL), a sister company of HDIL (Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd).
GACPL was supposed to build 672 flats for the people there and develop flats for MHDA and sell the remaining land to private developers for GACPL’s own development works.
However, it has been 14 years since…
