Former IAS officer Ashok Singhvi on Monday surrendered before a special court in Jaipur in connection with a money laundering case registered against him by the enforcement directorate (ED).

Additional solicitor general RD Rastogi, who represented the ED in the court, said: "Singhvi surrendered today (Monday) in a court that sent him to judicial custody till June 15."

On February 19 this year, four accused in the case had surrendered before the court. The case relates to a corruption scandal in the Rajasthan mines department in which the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) arrested a senior bureaucrat, considered close to then chief minister Vasundhara Raje, along with seven others, in September 2015.

The ED registered a complaint under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against the eight in July 2018. The accused include then principal secretary of mines Singhvi, then additional director of mines Pankaj Gehlot, then senior mining engineer Pushkar Raj Ameta and five others.

They had all been absconding after a special PMLA court in Jaipur issued non-bailable warrants against them in January 2019.

Four of them - chartered accountant Shyam Sunder Singhvi, Ameta, Gehlot and Dhirenda alias Chintu - surrendered in the court on February 19 and currently in judicial custody.

Another accused Mohd Rashid Sheikh and his wife Tamanna Begum are on the run. Sanjay Sethi, who was the middleman brokering deals between mines owners and the officials of the department, is said to be admitted to a hospital.

Earlier, Sheikh and Sethi filed anticipatory bail applications in the PMLA court. These were rejected on October 11, 2019, for Sheikh, and on October 14, 2019 for Sethi. On January 24 this year, the Rajasthan high court dismissed all petitions for converting non-bailable warrants into bailable. Additional solicitor general Rastogi said after this, the accused had moved an SLP in the Supreme Court. The SLP was dismissed by the apex court on February 10.

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