Money laundering case: Nagpur lawyer Satish Uke, his brother to remain in ED custody till April 11
India Today
A special court in Mumbai extended the ED custody of a lawyer who filed petitions against former Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. Lawyer Satish Uke and his brother Pradeep Uke were arrested in a money laundering case.
A special court under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) has sent advocate Satish Uke and his brother, to further five days in Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody.
While granting the remand till April 11, Special Judge MG Deshpande said, “In my opinion, if an opportunity is not granted to ED then the very purpose of confrontation and investigation will be paralysed. Confrontation plays an important role. If a remand application is rejected, then it will frustrate the very purpose of the investigation.”
Advocate Hiten Venegaonkar appearing for the agency sought the custody of both the accused for eight days. Venegaonkar said initially the accused did not cooperate with the agency but later on their statements were recorded in custody. And that details from the laptop and other data from phone have revealed some facts.
READ | ED arrests Nagpur lawyer who filed plea against Fadnavis in money laundering case
"Laptop of the accused persons was seized during the search operation which contains voluminous documents and they are required to be confronted with the documents as well as other persons, whose statements have been recorded so far during an investigation under PMLA. It is also required to trace the end-use of the huge sums of money that appear to have been laundered in this case. Also, there is a likelihood of their evading the summons, which may frustrate further proceedings under PMLA," argued Venegaonkar.
The agency had shown that there were two FIRs registered against Uke for land grabbing using forged documents and the agency claimed that the money thus obtained by such measures was layered and laundered by the two Uke brothers.
The court was also told by Venegaonkar that certain witnesses have been called on Friday and some officials who had dealt with the fraudulent registration of the land like the Tehsildar has been summoned on Monday. It is because of this that the agency needed the custody of the Uke brothers for further confrontation and investigation.
