Mumbai: The special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court on Wednesday rejected the bail plea of former Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik who was arrested by the the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for allegedly usurping a ₹300-crore prime plot in Kurla in connivance with Haseena Parkar, the late sister of fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar.
Special PMLA judge Rahul Rokade rejected the 63-year-old Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader’s plea, observing that though the statements of Munira Plumber, the original owner of the plot, had contradictions, they could not be brushed aside as they were recorded under Section 50 of the PMLA, 2002.
“The evidence regarding a conspiracy meeting between Malik and Haseena Parkar, as mentioned in the statement of Sardar Shahwali Khan (a convict in the March 1993 serial bombings case), also cannot be ignored,” the court said.
The court also discarded Malik’s contention that the penal provisions of the PMLA were not applicable to his case, as all the transactions entered into by him with respect to the plot had taken place much prior to the PMLA coming into force in 2005. It held that in view of his continuous possession of the tainted property (the allegedly usurped plot), the ED was justified in invoking Section 3 of the PMLA and charging the NCP leader with money-laundering.
The court also said that there was no evidence to show that Malik had made any inquiry with Plumber, the original owner of the property.
Malik was arrested by the ED on February 23 in connection with a money-laundering case registered by it on February 14 against fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim and some of his close aides. The money-laundering case in turn was based on an FIR registered by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on February 3, 2022, against the fugitive gangster and his close associates.
The ED has accused Malik of “indirectly funding the D-gang’s activities by usurping a prime piece of land in Kurla with the help of Dawood’s deceased sister, Haseena Parkar, by using a fabricated power of attorney. In its chargesheet, the agency claimed that the former Maharashtra minister had paid only ₹20 lakh to acquire the property in Goawala Compound in Kurla, in a deal dating back to September 2005, and paid the amount to people other than the owner of the three-acre compound, Munira Plumber.
The ED claimed that Malik and Parkar connived to usurp the land using a fabricated power of attorney after the death of the owner, Munira Plumber’s father Fazalabbas Goawala, following which “nobody was looking after the said property”.
The chargesheet filed by the agency stated that Malik, a local muscleman, first “illegally” occupied a store in the compound and got the tenancy registered in the name of his brother, Aslam Malik.
Parkar’s driver-cum-bodyguard Salim Patel had allegedly met Plumber, posing as a social worker and convinced her to execute a power of attorney in his favour so that he could help her clear the encroachments on the property as well as settle disputes with tenants. According to the ED, Patel, on Parkar’s instructions, prepared a supplementary power of attorney, which was used to transfer the property to Solidus Investments (owned by Malik’s family), whose tenancy rights he had also acquired. Solidus was a tenant at Goawala compound.
