Excise policy case: Delhi court sends Sanjay Singh to 14-day judicial custody

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Friday sent Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh to 14 days of judicial custody in connection with a money laundering case being probed by the ED pertaining to the now-scrapped excise policy.

He was produced before Special Judge M K Nagpal of Rouse Avenue Court on the expiry of his three-day ED custody.

It is also to be noted that Singh on Friday moved the Delhi High Court challenging his arrest and remand.

After hearing the parties, the judge sent him to judicial custody till October 27. A copy of the detailed order is awaited. The high court has agreed to hear Singh's plea on Friday itself after his lawyer mentioned the matter for urgent listing before a division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Sanjeev Narula.

Singh has challenged his arrest and remand to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) saying that the grounds of arrest were not given to him by the financial probe agency.

On Tuesday, the ED had sought his further custody from Judge Nagpal on the grounds that his behaviour was totally non-cooperative with regard to the source of acquisition of some confidential documents of ED pertaining to this case.

Other grounds on which the ED sought his custody were that he refused to acknowledge or sign the Call Detail Record (CDR) of his mobile number in respect to the calls appearing between the said number and the number of co-accused, Amit Arora.

It was further submitted that the digital data of around 200 GB has been recovered during the course of fresh search and the same is yet to be analysed and the task of confrontation of accused with the said digital data is yet not completed.

On the other hand, senior advocate Rebecca John, who argued for Singh, claimed that the ED had no grounds for seeking extension of his custody in the case. "I (Singh) will not plead guilty to your fanciful allegations," she said.

The court had also directed Singh to not speak to the media while being produced, saying it creates security problems.

The judge also directed journalists not to ask him questions. The financial probe agency on October 4 arrested Singh after carrying out searches at his residence in the North Avenue area.

Singh was arrested under Sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).