The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday, 9 May carried out fresh searches against Punjab industries minister Sanjeev Arora and individuals allegedly linked to him as part of a newly registered money laundering investigation, officials said.
Arora, 62, is an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA from the Ludhiana West Assembly constituency.
According to officials, Arora’s official residence in Chandigarh was among five premises searched across north India. The ED also raided two locations in Delhi and the office of Hampton Sky Realty Ltd in Gurugram’s Udyog Vihar area.
The searches were launched after the agency registered a fresh case under the criminal provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), officials said. Earlier, on 17 April, the ED had searched Arora and entities linked to him under the civil provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
As part of that probe, officials said the agency provisionally attached movable and immovable assets belonging to Hampton Sky Realty Ltd, its director Arora and associated entities on 19 April over alleged FEMA violations involving bogus sales and exports worth Rs 157.12 crore.
Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann criticised the raids during a press conference in Sangrur, accusing the BJP-led Union government of using Central agencies such as the ED and the CBI as “weapons” for political purposes. “The end of this unethical alliance of ED-BJP will begin from Punjab,” Mann said in a post on X.
According to the ED, the latest PMLA investigation relates to alleged fake GST purchases of mobile phones worth more than Rs 100 crore and subsequent exports used to “round trip” allegedly illegitimate funds from Dubai into India.
The agency alleged that fake GST purchase invoices were generated through “non-existing” firms based in Delhi in order to fraudulently claim input tax credit (ITC). Following the April searches, Arora had said he would fully cooperate with investigators and expressed confidence that “the truth will prevail”.
The AAP has described the raids as a politically motivated witch-hunt orchestrated by the BJP-led Centre ahead of Punjab’s Assembly elections scheduled for early next year.
Arora is already under investigation in an earlier money laundering case in which the ED raided him and his associates in 2024 over allegations that industrial land was improperly used for residential projects. At the time, he was serving as a Rajya Sabha MP.
Over recent weeks, the ED has intensified action against several politically connected individuals in Punjab, which is due to go to the polls in early 2027.
The agency had earlier raided premises linked to Lovely Group promoter and Rajya Sabha MP Ashok Kumar Mittal. Mittal later joined the BJP along with six other AAP MPs after the searches.
Earlier this week, the ED also searched multiple Punjab-based builders, real estate firms and an alleged associate of an AAP functionary while making allegations against Punjab AAP president and cabinet minister Aman Arora, who dismissed the ED’s allegations as a “fabricated narrative”.
With PTI inputs
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