Iqbal Mirchi link: ED grills Praful for over 11 hours

Mumbai: Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials Friday gril-led former aviation minister Praful Patel in connection with his alleged business connections with deceased gangster Mohammad Iqbal Memon alias Iqbal Mirchi, a henchman of fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar. Mr Patel left the ED office at 10.30 pm, amidst speculation that he could be detained by the officials.

Mr Patel reached the ED office at Ballard Pier minutes before his designated time at 11 am. The NCP leader avoided speaking with the media before entering the ED office. The investigating agency is probing into the reason of his company, Millennium Developers Pvt Ltd, constructing Ceejay House in upmarket Worli on land owned by the Memons.

The ED also grilled Mr Patel to dig into his larger connections with Memon, who was closely associated with the Dawood gang and had fled India after the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts. Memon died in 2013 of a heart attack in London. “We grilled Mr Patel with a questionnaire that was put together based on the case’s probe and the statement of the Memon family members and the two arrested accused. We might question him aga-in,” said an ED officer.   

Mr Patel figured on the ED’s radar after its officers arrested two of Memon’s henchmen, Ranjitsinh Bindra and Harun Aleem Yusuf, in connection with the case and found property deal-related documents linking Mr Patel and Memon.

The Enforcement Directorate then issued summons to Mr Patel to question him on Ceejay House. The plush multi-storey building was built in 2006-2007 and later its third and fourth floors were transferred in the name of Memon’s wife, Hajra Iqbal, and their sons.

The links were unearthed after the ED conducted searches and seized several documents only to find that the land on which the tower stands is owned by Memon, which he allegedly bought from the proceeds of his crime syndicate. Patel is already under ED’s investigation in connection with the alleged aviation scam in Delhi.

Yusuf, a British national, allegedly introduced those properties, whereas Bindra allegedly negotiated the deal for a commission of ' 30 crore in a deal made in the late eighties. The transaction took place between Bindra’s Sunblink Real Estate Pvt. Ltd. and Mirchi’s Rockside Enterprises and a trust that owned theseproperties.