PMLA case: Supreme Court reserves order in plea by Rana Ayyub

January 31, 2023

The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its order in journalist Rana Ayyub’s plea challenging the jurisdiction of the Ghaziabad court which commenced proceedings against her in a Prevention of Money Laundering (PMLA) case.

A bench of Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice JB Pardiwala reserved the order after arguments were concluded today.

A money laundering case has been initiated by the ED on the basis of a First Information Report (FIR) registered in September 2021 by the Indirapuram Police Station in Ghaziabad under provisions of the Indian Penal Code, Information Technology Amendment Act and Black Money Act against Ayyub.

As per the FIR it was alleged that Rana had illegally acquired funds from the general public in the name of charity by launching fundraiser campaigns on online crowd funding platform Ketto.

It added that the journalist also recieved foreign contributions without registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA).

Investigation by ED revealed that Ayyub launched three fundraiser campaigns and collected funds totalling ₹2.69 crore.

These included:

1. Raising funds for farmer and the slum-dwellers.

2. Funds for relief work for Assam, Bihar and Maharashtra;

3. Funds to help those impacted by COVID-19 in India.

As per ED the funds raised were received in her father and sister’s accounts, and were subsequently transferred to her personal accounts. Further, she allegedly utilised these funds to create a fixed deposit of ₹50 lakh for herself and transferred another ₹50 lakh to a new bank account.

The investigation revealed that only 28 lakhs were been used for relief work whereas ,a bank balance of ₹1.7 crore was attached by the agency on February 4, 2022.

As per the investigation by ED ,it was revealed that Ms. Rana Ayyub illegally raised Rs. 2.69 Crore by launching three online campaigns in the name of charity by cheating the general public donors. These funds were not used for the intended purpose, instead used for creation of assets for herself.

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