HC grants bail to suspended TMC leader Kuntal Ghosh
A single-judge Bench of the Calcutta High Court, on Wednesday, granted conditional bail to the suspended youth Trinamul Congress leader Kuntal Ghosh who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in January 2023 in connection with the cash-for-school job case.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) will appeal against the judgement of the special court that acquitted 19 people in the 2G spectrum allocation money laundering case, agency sources said.
They said the agency will study the order and will knock on the doors of the high court armed with their evidence and investigation.
Sources said it has to be seen if the ED case has been rejected by the court merely because the predicate offence probe of CBI has been rejected or there were other reasons to do so.
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The special court of O P Saini acquitted 19 accused, including former telecom minister A Raja and DMK leader Kanimozhi in the ED’s money laundering case relating to the 2G scam.
Besides Raja and Kanimozhi, the Special Judge also acquitted Shahid Balwa, Vinod Goenka, Asif Balwa, Rajiv Aggarwal, Karim Morani, P Amirtham and Sharad Kumar in connection with the case.
In its charge sheet, the ED had also named DMK supremo M Karunanidhi’s wife Dayalu Ammal as an accused in the case in which it had alleged that Rs 200 crore was paid by Swan Telecom (P) Ltd (STPL) promoters to DMK-run Kalaignar TV.
In its final report, the ED had named 10 individuals and nine companies as accused and listed them in the charge sheet for the offences under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
Besides Kalaignar TV, the other companies accused in the case were STPL (now Etisalat DB Telecom (P) Ltd), Kusegaon Realty (P) Ltd, Cineyug Media & Entertainment (P) Ltd, Dynamix Realty, Eversmile Construction Company (P) Ltd, Conwood Construction & Developers (P) Ltd, DB Realty Ltd and Mystical Construction (P) Ltd (earlier known as Nihar Constructions (P) Ltd).