98% ED cases involving politicians filed against opposition leaders: TMC's Saket Gokhale
New Delhi (PTI): Trinamool Congress leader Saket Gokhale on Saturday said 98 percent of the cases filed by the Enforcement Directorate against politicians were against opposition leaders.
"The remaining two percent are those who went and joined the BJP's 'washing machine,'" he said.
Gokhale referred to Thursday's statement of ED Director Rahul Navin, to claim that the surge in cases post-2014 was at the behest of Narendra Modi, who came to power the same year.
Speaking at an event on ED Day, Navin said the anti-money laundering law had been "largely ineffective" before 2014 and there has been a significant step-up in enforcement activity since then.
In a post on X, Gokhale said, "Yesterday, the head of central agency ED admitted that there's been a surge of cases filed after Modi Government came to power in 2014."
"In the last 11 years, a total of 5,297 cases were filed by ED. How many were taken to court for trial? Only 47," he said.
The TMC Rajya Sabha MP said the conviction rate in ED cases is only 0.7 percent.
"That means out of every 1000 cases filed, accused were found guilty in only seven cases," he said.
"Therefore, out of every 1000 cases, 993 cases are filed by ED purely to keep a person in jail because getting bail under the draconian PMLA is almost impossible," he said.
According to the ED Director, 1,739 cases filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act are under trial at present. He said out of the 47 cases decided by courts, the conviction rate was 93.6 percent with only three acquittals.
Meanwhile, Gokhale accused the Centre of using the probe process as a punishment.
"The idea is to turn the process into punishment in order to blackmail and extort the innocent accused into breaking down and following the orders of the BJP," he said.
Navin on Thursday claimed that the slowdown in the adjudication of these cases could be attributed to a "general delay" in the judicial system of the country, combined with the inherent complexity of such investigations.
Speaking at an event held here to mark the ED Day, the agency chief said though the PMLA was enacted in 2003 and came into force on July 1, 2005, it was "largely ineffective" in the initial years with less than 200 cases per year, mostly "restricted" to drug-related offences.
"After 2014, however, there has been a significant step-up in enforcement activity. From 2014 to 2024, 5,113 new PMLA investigations were initiated, averaging more than 500 cases per year," Navin said.
The central probe agency was established on May 1, 1956.
It implements two criminal laws --The Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act (FEOA) -- apart from the civil provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
