Mumbai, Oct 23 (IANS) The ED conducted search operations at half a dozen premises, including offices and residential properties, in Mumbai and Delhi and a farmhouse in Maharashtra in connection with the illegal receipt of foreign exchange from Dubai and Singapore by Mega Millennium Private Limited, an official said on Friday.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted the searches under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, the official said in a statement.
Apart from inspecting digital devices and incriminating documents related to Mega Millennium Private Limited, the investigators also conducted searches at a farmhouse in Karjat, Maharashtra, the ED said.
Foreign currency, Indian currency and valuables worth several crores of rupees were also detected by the ED during the search operation, said an official.
The focus of the ED’s search operation was on Harish Dedhiya, a Mumbai-based consultant and director of the company, the statement said.
The company and its directors, including Dedhiya and his wife Dhara Dedhiya, have received large sums of foreign exchange from suspicious companies based in Dubai and Singapore, the ED said.
The ED investigation indicated that Dedhiya incorporated companies by appointing his own employees/dummies as Directors. Within a year of incorporation, these companies received hundreds of crores of rupees, which were layered through multiple shell entities, the ED said.
In a separate case in Maharashtra, the ED conducted search operations at 10 premises, including hospital/IVF centres, located in Thane, Baramati and Nashik and seized digital evidence and Rs 29 lakh in cash during the investigation in a human egg extraction racket, an official said.
The ED’s Mumbai Zonal Office-II conducted search operations on October 16 at the10 premises under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
The ED investigation was initiated based on an FIR and a subsequent chargesheet filed by Badlapur (East) Police Station, Thane, Maharashtra, alleging offences of cheating and forgery under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, and violations of the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021, and the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, by Manjusha Wankhede and 16 others, the ED said in a statement.
The case pertains to an organised network involved in recruiting financially vulnerable women for human egg donation and supplying them to various IVF centres and Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) banks through donor-supply agents operating under different proprietorship concerns, the agency said.
–IANS
rch/uk
