The Bombay High Court building. (File) Avinash Bhosale, the Pune-based businessman and his son, under investigation for alleged violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), approached the Bombay High Court on Friday challenging summons issued to them by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
Bhosale contended that the ED had raided his office premises without informing him about the charges levelled against him and sought clarity on the same. Bhosale, who also challenged the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR), said he was willing to cooperate with the investigation and therefore his son Amit, who is managing director of Avinash Bhosale Infrastructure Limited (ABIL), had accompanied ED officials to Mumbai and was interrogated for more than 18 hours.
Due to these reasons, the ED, which has shown “high handedness” while issuing summons and raiding office premises, should be restrained from taking any coercive action against the petitioner pending hearing, Bhosale’s counsel urged.
While a division bench of Justice S S Shinde and Justice Manish Pitale refused to stall the investigation on Friday, the ED said it would respond to the plea at the next hearing on February 15 and orally said “nothing will happen” till then.
An ED team from Mumbai recently conducted searches at the office premises of ABIL on Ganeshkhind Road in Pune. Bhosale had earlier been questioned by the agency in November last year. In 2015, the ED had imposed a fine of Rs 1.8 crore on Bhosale under a case of FEMA violation registered in 2007.