Bulk of money in Raut wife’s a/c traced to Patra chawl case: ED

The ED, in the Sanjay Raut case, is in the process of recording statements of those who received cash payments from him for the Alibaug land he is alleged to have purchased using payoffs from a developer linked to the Mhada project. Those who deposited funds into his wife’s account are also being questioned.

- Rebecca Samervel & Vijay V Singh

Mumbai: The ED has called those associated with the Alibaug land deal to record their statements on Friday and Saturday. The ED informed the court that “the names of the persons are not disclosed in this (Raut’s) remand application so that the persons are not influenced by the accused.”

The ED alleged that these “documents demonstrate…purchase of the properties in Alibaug and substantial cash transactions with the land owners.” The agency has also alleged that Raut threatened landowners near Kihim beach in Alibaug to sell their land to him.

The ED has summoned Varsha Raut for questioning because a bulk of monies deposited into her account have been traced to Pravin Raut, who is a key accused in the Patra chawl redevelopment case.

The Sena spokesman’s remand application says, “When the investigation pertaining to several bank accounts were conducted in presence of Sanjay Raut it has been revealed that several amounts have been received in the account of Varsha Raut..” Raut gave evasive answers for the reason as to why these huge amounts were paid to his wife, the ED alleged. The ED is examining the KYC documents and statements of the respective bank accounts.

The ED was represented by special public prosecutors Hiten Venegaonkar and Kavita Patil.

Granting the agency custody until Monday, special judge MG Deshpande said that “remarkable progress” has been made in the investigations. The judge said the trail of payments of Rs 1.17 crore and 1.08 crore was not before the court when it had earlier restricted the remand of accused till Thursday.