J&K cricket association case: ED attaches assets worth Rs 7.25 crore

The assets, including residential properties, attached by ED on Thursday belong to Ahsan Ahmad Mirza and certain others accused in the case.

The case is related to alleged irregularities in grants given by BCCI to Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association (JKCA). It was alleged that between 2002 and 2011, funds to the tune of over Rs 43 crore (ED now claims over Rs 50 crore) were siphoned off from the JKCA coffers. These funds were part of the Rs 112 crore grant given by BCCI to JKCA.

“Investigation by ED so far has revealed that Ahsan Ahmad Mirza in connivance with other office bearers of JKCA, had misappropriated JKCA Funds to the tune of Rs. 51.90 crore and utilized proceeds of crime for settling his personal and business liabilities,” the ED said in a statement.

In 2020, ED had attached properties worth Rs 14.32 crore in the case. These belonged to Mirza, Mir Manzoor Ghazanfar and Abdullah. In that attachment, Abdullah’s Gupkar road bungalow too had been attached apart from his properties in Jammu. Before that, it had also filed a prosecution complaint against Mirza. Abdullah has already been questioned multiple times in the case with the last questioning being done just ahead of the DDC polls in 2020.

“Between 2006 and January 2012, when Dr Farooq Abdullah was the President of JKCA, he misused his position and clout by illegal appointments of office bearer at JKCA to whom he gave financial powers for the purpose of laundering of JKCA Funds. Investigation also reveals that Dr. Farooq Abdullah was instrumental as well as beneficiary of the laundered funds of JKCA,” the ED said in a statement earlier.

The agency had claimed that despite there being an existing bank account of JKCA, six new bank accounts were opened for alleged parking of JKCA funds and siphoning of the same. One dormant bank account in the name of Kashmir Wing of JKCA was also made operational for the same purpose, the agency had said.

Omar Abdullah had then refuted the allegations saying the properties were ancestral. “The properties attached are largely ancestral dating from the 1970s with the most recent one built before 2003. There can be no justification for the seizures because they fail the very basic test of having been acquired as the proceeds of the “crime” being investigated,” Omar had said in a tweet.

The ED case is based on a CBI FIR of 2015. In July, 2018 CBI filed a chargesheet in the case. It charged Farooq Abdullah and three others — the then JKCA general secretary Md Saleem Khan and the then treasurer Ahsan Ahmad Mirza, as also J&K Bank executive Bashir Ahmad Misgar — under Ranbir Penal Code provisions related to criminal conspiracy and criminal breach of trust. It alleged that “Abdullah had connived with the treasurer of JKCA and others for undue siphoning off and misappropriation of funds”.