Note ban: ED arrests Sekhar Reddy, 2 others in PMLA case

Chennai: The ED has arrested sand mining baron J Sekhar Reddy and his two alleged associates in connection with a money laundering case registered post demonetisation.

Officials said the three were arrested yesterday under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after they were called for questioning by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) here.

Reddy and his two associates, K Sreenivasulu and P Kumar, were later produced in a court which sent them to jail till March 28, they added.

Reddy was earlier arrested by the CBI too in the same case of alleged black money generation post demonetisation and was out on conditional bail. The ED too had arrested two other people in this case –Mahavir Hirani and Ashok Jain in December last year.

The agency had filed a criminal complaint against Reddy and others based on a CBI FIR in the case which was registered after the I-T department first searched his and his associates’ premises in November, 2016.

The I-T department has made one of the biggest detection of alleged unaccounted income of over Rs 142 crore in this case with the seizure of Rs 34 crore in new notes, post demonetisation.

The Reddy case and the other involving Delhi-based lawyer Rohit Tandon are being probed by at least four agencies– the ED, the Income Tax department, the CBI and Delhi Police, and are considered the two most high-profile black money cases being investigated in the aftermath of the notes ban.