Sana Satish Babu is unable to justify payment of Rs 1. 5 Cr: ED to court

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed its reply before the Delhi High Court over a plea by Hyderabad-based-businessman Satish Sana Babu seeking quashing of the ED's action against him.

The ED in its reply said Sana Satish Babu was "unable to justify a payment of Rs 1.5 crore made to the main accused (Moin Qureshi) as a bonafide business expense and thus custodial interrogation was required to be done."

"The Petitioner ( referring to Satish ) was arrested in accordance to the mandate of Section 19 and by no stretch of imagination have the actions been violative of the mandate of the Constitution," the ED said.

The response comes after ED assuming that there are no new facts from the interrogation conducted against Sana . “It is submitted that the petitioner has said that he has been summoned twice without any new fact emerging. However, it is wrong to say so, as investigations in respect of financial transactions that took place between the petitioner and Moin Qureshi are still underway."

The ED also submitted that the investigation in respect of source of these funds which are nothing but Proceeds of Crime is still underway and backward acquisition, manner of transfer and subsequent utilization is being investigated so that the entire trail of the Proceeds of crime can be unearthed.

The ED termed the whole petition as a "misconceived interpretation of the law, which in no stretch of imagination is a reasonable one."

Sana through his counsels Wasey Khan and Shaikh Bakhtiyar knocked at the doors of the High Court seeking quashing of the money laundering case, allegedly involving him and meat exporter Moin Qureshi. He claimed that, he was named as a witness in the case and appeared before the ED in pursuance to the summons, he was later arrested on July 26 on the ground that there were contradictions in his statements.

In October last year, on the basis of a complaint filed by Sana, a case was registered against then CBI director Alok Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana on charges of accepting a bribe from a businessman, who was related to the case.