MUMBAI: A sessions court on Friday rejected the bail plea of Pune stud farm owner Hasan Ali Khan and his associate Kashinath Tapuriah, arrested in March by Enforcement Directorate which alleged that they had laundered $93 million in foreign banks and indulged in conspiracy to “wage war against the nation”.
The bail petitions were rejected by Principal Sessions Judge, Swapna Joshi, who agreed with the prosecution that granting them liberty at this juncture was not justified.
Opposing their bail, ED Counsel, Ujjwal Nikam, alleged that Khan and Tapuriah had laundered $93 million in foreign banks.
He also alleged that $300 million had been obtained by Khan from sale of weapons. This, Nikam said, was reflected in some documents recovered during investigation which were signed by him and notarised in London.
Nikam contended that both the accused had hatched a criminal conspiracy with international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi in the trade of weapons. Thus logical inference could be drawn that they had indulged in conspiracy to ‘wage war against the nation’, a serious offence under IPC.
The ED counsel said that Khan had acquired passports by submitting forged and fabricated documents from various regional passport authorities like Hyderabad, Patna, Mumbai, Pune and London. Various offences were registered against Khan, Nikam said.
He alleged that Khan had transferred USD seven lakh from his Swiss Bank account to the account of SK Financial, London. Nikam submitted that notarised documents seized from the possession of Khan mentioned that Tapuriah was his advisor. (PTI)