Raninder Singh
Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh’s son Raninder Singh Tuesday did not appear before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) at its zonal office in Jalandhar and instead sought adjournment in the matter citing a parliamentary standing committee hearing in connection with the Olympic Games, 2021.
The ED, last week, had summoned Raninder for questioning in an alleged Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) violation case.
Taking view of the application filed by Raninder, who is also the president of the National Rifle Association of India, the ED issued fresh summons asking him to join the probe on November 6.
Raninder’s lawyer Jaiveer Shergill said: “My client has sought adjournment as he is required to be present before the parliamentary standing committee for a hearing in connection with the 2021 (Tokyo) Olympic Games. He has sought details from the ED of the case in relation to which he has been summoned as the summons issued are vague”.
Raninder had earlier appeared before the ED in 2016 in connection with this case.
In August, the ED filed three applications in a Ludhiana court where income tax cases are going on against Punjab CM and his son — two against Raninder and one against Amarinder. The ED has sought inspection of new records filed by the income tax department. The case is still pending in the Ludhiana court.
A senior ED officer said that they had initiated investigation against Raninder under FEMA following a complaint by the I-T department that he had misled the department about the trusts owned by him in British Virgin Islands.
“I-T department officials, in the cases against CM and his son, had placed on record that Amarinder and Raninder had carried out some undisclosed financial transactions through a bank account in HSBC, Geneva, and HSBC Financial Services Limited,” an ED source said.