SC notice to ED on bail plea of ex-Noida Authority chief

New Delhi : The Supreme Court today directed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to respond to the bail plea of former Noida Authority chief engineer Yadav Singh who has been chargesheeted in connection with a money laundering case. A bench comprising Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao issued notice to the ED and asked it to file its response within two weeks.

Singh has approached the apex court challenging the order passed by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court denying him bail in the matter. In his plea before the Allahabad High Court, he had contended that he was technically entitled to bail since the chargesheet was not submitted by the probe agency within the statutory period.

However, the high court had dismissed his petition considering the ED’s submission that the chargesheet was filed on time. In 2015, the ED had slapped money laundering charges against Singh, who was engineer-in-chief of the Noida Authority, Greater Noida Authority and Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority, on the basis of an FIR lodged by the CBI.

Earlier, an Income Tax raid in November 2014 had revealed that Singh’s assets were hugely disproportionate to his income, following which he was suspended by the then Uttar Pradesh government. In July 2015, the Allahabad High Court directed the CBI to investigate the case stating that the allegations were most serious.