ED attaches lands, properties of Rohit R Pawar in money-laundering case

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached lands and properties, worth over Rs 50 crore, belonging to Nationalist Congress Party-SP MLA Rohit R. Pawar, officials said on Friday. They include 161.30 acres of land, plus a sugar plant, machinery, and buildings at Kannad, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, owned by Baramati Agro Ltd., headed by Rohit R. Pawar, the grand-nephew of NCP-SP President Sharad Pawar. The attachments come in an alleged money-laundering case pertaining to the illegal sale of sugar factories by the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank to Baramati Agro Ltd., of which Rohit R. Pawar is the CEO. The assets have been provisionally attached under a Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) case which the ED has been probing against the Karjat-Jamkhed MLA. In the past, the ED has provisionally attached some other assets worth more than Rs 120 crore in the case originally filed by the Mumbai Police’s Economic Offences Wing in 2019. Last month, the ED had subjected Rohit R. Pawar to intensive grilling for two full days and is likely to summon him again for the probe into the matter, even as the NCP-SP cried foul and alleged selective political vendetta against Opposition parties’ leaders by the government.