Court Sends Arora to Judicial Custody & CBI FIR Mentions Vigilance Bureau Chief

May

2026

Panjab’s former Industries and Commerce Minister and former Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament) member, Sanjeev Arora has approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court on 12 May challenging his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). He termed the action ‘illegal’, ‘arbitrary’, and violative of constitutional safeguards. ED had alleged that Arora’s firm, Hampton Sky Realty Limited (HSRL) had paid USD 29M in remittances to a firm registered in the name of a daily-wage laborer. In another HSRL case related to buying mobile phones locally and selling them abroad, ED says, ‘Multiple supplier entities are interconnected through common mobile numbers, email IDs, and other identifiers, indicating that these entities are controlled by a single group of persons for the purpose of generating accommodation entries and fake invoices.’ Counsel of Arora argued that ED’s case is based on Goods and Services Tax remittance against the exports of mobile phones but the Investigating Officer has not collected any material from Department of Customs to verify whether mobile phones were actually exported or not. The counsel added the grounds of arrest were ‘demonstrably pre-typed and predetermined,’ as the investigating officer allegedly perused Arora’s statement at 3:25 pm, and the arrest was effected at 4 pm on 9 May, with a detailed 17-page document. Meanwhile, on 18 May, the special PMLA court sent Arora to judicial custody. ED has also issued notice to the Chairman-cum-Managing Director of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL), Basant Garg, and Director (Commercial) Harsharan Kaur Trehan, in a case of returning of bank guarantee worth millions of dollars to a company associated with Arora. Additionally, after the raid by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a corruption case against police Inspector OP Rana, reader to the Punjab Vigilance Bureau (PVB) chief and three others on 11 May, the agency's First Information Report mentions the name of Panjab Director General of Police (Vigilance) Sharad Satya Chauhan. The middleman arrested Raghav Goel is also associated with the BJP Youth Wing. However, the larger question is when the Panjab government had withdrawn its general consent to CBI in November 2020, how did the agency conduct raids in the state? (earlier coverage).