PMLA court grants bail to Zakir Naik's aide

Mumbai: A special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court Friday granted bail to Abdul Kadir Najmuddin Satakh, an aide of controversial televangelist Dr Zakir Naik.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had arrested Satakh for allegedly helping Naik in laundering money.  Special Judge M.S. Azmi granted bail to Satakh on a personal bond of Rs 5 lakh and one or two sureties of the same amount.

Later, on the request of Satakh’s lawyer, the Judge allowed him to be released on cash bail and granted him four weeks’ time to arrange for the sureties.  

The Judge has imposed several conditions on Satakh while granting him bail.

The conditions include that he will be available for investigation as and when required, he will submit his passport and will not leave the country without the court’s prior permission, and he will provide address proof and contact number of himself as well as two of his blood relatives.  

Satakh had sought bail on grounds that he was available to the probe agency since the past one year and during this period, ED officers had already recorded his statements and he had provided all the details available to him.

His lawyer had also argued that the ED arrested him only after he filed an application in the Karnataka high court seeking some relief. It was also pointed out before the court that in his statement, he had already given the entire money trail and there was no need to keep him in custody.  

ED counsel Hiten Venegaonkar opposed his bail application saying that Satakh was also a director of the Dubai-based Global Broadca-sting Corporation (GBC), which owned Peace TV, a channel run by Naik.

GBC routed Rs 79 crore to Harmony Media Pvt Ltd in Mumbai, which made the content for Peace TV.  

While Satakh claimed that GBC was sold in June 2017 to a UK national, the ED claimed that it was done after the probe began in India into Naik’s businesses, alleging that the sale was done to “obfuscate the routes undertaken for suspected money laundering.”