City Centre case adjourned to November 15

LUDHIANA: A day after the Punjab and Haryana high court stayed the inspection of the City Centre case filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), a local court on Saturday adjourned the case to November 15. On Friday, a single judge bench of Justice Inderjit Singh, acting on a petition by Delhi-based Chetan Gupta (one of the accused in the case) issued a notice of motion to the Enforcement Directorate (ED), and stayed the trial court’s orders allowing the agency to inspect case files until the next date of hearing in HC on November 12.

On Saturday, the ED officer along with the directorate’s counsel had come for inspection before the trial court, but counsel for the accused Chetan Gupta had intimated court that the order dated 25 October had been stayed by the high court, and produced a copy of the orders. The court later adjourned the case to November.

On October 25, the court of Ludhiana session judge Gurbir Singh had allowed the ED’s plea for permitting the agency to inspect files of the City Centre case, and had scheduled the inspection for November 3. In its application filed in the trial court, ED said it should be allowed to inspect judicial records and files related to the case, as a separate probe in money laundering was pending. In 2013, ED had filed a separate FIR under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, on the basis of an FIR filed by Vigilance Bureau in the case. Since then, a probe was pending for alleged money laundering in the case.