Mumbai court allows ED to take businessman Pravin Raut to Delhi for questioning in PACL case

A special Mumbai court on Tuesday granted permission to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to take businessman Pravin Raut to Delhi for questioning him in connection with the PACL money laundering case. Raut, a former director of Guru Ashish Construction Pvt Ltd, is in judicial custody and lodged at Arthur Road Jail here.

He was arrested by the ED in February this year in a money laundering probe linked to a Rs 1,034-crore land scam related to the redevelopment of a chawl in Mumbai.

The court, while granting permission to the probe agency, said that the application was allowed on the condition that the investigating officer must file an undertaking that once the ED, CBI custody, etc, if any, as directed by the Delhi court, ends, Raut is resubmitted in Arthur Road Jail immediately under safe and sure conduct.


The ED can take the accused businessman to Delhi after the hearing of his bail plea, filed before the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court here, is over, the court said.

The agency had initiated the money laundering probe based on an FIR registered by the CBI, alleging that PACL had collected Rs 49,100 crore from crores of investors on the pretext of sale and development of agricultural land.

Meanwhile, the Patra-Chawl case against Raut pertains to the alleged irregularities in the sale of floor space index (FSI) of a plot by a firm, linked to him, that is a subsidiary company of the Housing Development Infrastructure Ltd.

The HDIL is under investigation by the ED and few other agencies in connection with an alleged fraud of about Rs 4,300 crore at the Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank.