Delhi Waqf Board money laundering case: Court reserves order on ED's pleaagainst AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan

New Delhi: A Delhi court on Saturday reserved its order on an application filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan for evading summons in a money laundering case related to alleged irregularities in appointments made by the Delhi Waqf Board.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Divya Malhotra will decide on April 9 on whether to summon Khan to respond to the ED's plea.

The federal probe agency alleged that Khan had aggravated his role from a witness to an accused in the case by filing an anticipatory bail plea and running away from the investigation.

The ED, represented by Special Public Prosecutor Simon Benjamin, also stated that the agency is not able to conclude the probe against Khan because he is not presenting himself before it.

"All the other persons are the aides of this particular person. His role is much larger than the other accused persons who have been already arrested and charge-sheeted," he said.

Khan, the Okhla MLA of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), was not named as an accused in a recent chargesheet filed by the ED.

The agency has named five entities in its prosecution complaint (the ED's equivalent of a chargesheet), including three suspected associates of Khan-Zeeshan Haider, Daud Nasir and Jawed Imam Siddiqui.

The agency had, after conducting raids on premises linked to Khan and some others in October last year, claimed that the AAP MLA had acquired "huge proceeds of crime" in cash through illegal recruitment of staff to the Delhi Waqf Board and invested those for purchasing immovable assets in the name of his associates when he headed the Board.

The searches were conducted in the case related to alleged illegal recruitment of staff and illegitimate personal gains made by the accused by way of unfairly leasing out Waqf Board properties from 2018 to 2022 when Khan was its chairperson, the ED has said.

The money-laundering case stems from an FIR lodged by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and three Delhi Police complaints.

Several "incriminating" materials in the form of physical and digital evidence were seized during the raids, indicating Khan's involvement in the offence of money laundering, the agency has said.