Enforcement directorate seizes Chandigarh home of Congress MLA Sukhpal Khaira

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has raided several locations, including the residence of Punjab Congress MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira, as part of a money laundering investigation. The agency has provisionally seized Khaira's Chandigarh asset to the tune of Rs 3.82 crore under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The ED revealed that Khaira's asset in Sector 5, Chandigarh, was seized on March 8. The agency charges that Khaira received Rs 3.82 crore of ill-gotten gains from an international drug cartel operating under his business associate Gurdev Singh. The ED probes show that Singh and his foreign counterparts laundered drug money to Khaira, which he expended allegedly on his election campaign.

Khaira denies charges, calls it 'political vendetta'

Reacting to the development, Khaira said that he had not received any formal notice from the ED and learnt about the attachment of his property through the media. Calling the action a "character assassination," he claimed that the BJP central government was resorting to the use of the ED to target opposition leaders.

"If the news is true, I ought to have been informed and not the media being informed first," Khaira asserted.

Khaira's political career and prior legal woes

Khaira, ex-AAP leader, had earlier won the Bholath Assembly constituency in 2017. He left AAP in 2019, launched his own Punjab Ekta Party, and then finally joined Congress and won the 2022 election from the same seat.

The ED's case against Khaira is based on a FIR lodged by the Punjab Police against Gurdev Singh and others in 2011, who were convicted in 2017 for smuggling drugs. The agency asserts that Khaira and his family had spent Rs 6.61 crore between 2014 and 2020, Rs 3.82 crore of which are asserted to be unexplained. A handwritten account book, reportedly seized in an ED raid in March 2021, is said to carry records of financial transactions amounting to Khaira's known sources of income.

Legal proceedings and ED's assertions

Khaihra was arrested in November 2021 and subsequently charge-sheeted in January 2022 by a special PMLA court in Mohali. The ED claims that he had extended protection and facilitation for drug-related transactions and had gained significant pecuniary benefits in the process.

With the recent freezing of his assets, legal troubles for the Congress leader continue to pile up.