On a day when the Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided a trust registered with the Maharashtra Waqf Board, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Nawab Malik announced that a party delegation would visit the ED office with a list of cases pending against the BJP leaders.
“The agencies can probe us whenever they want. We are not scared, neither we have anything to hide. But as a party, we have decided that a delegation led by our State president Jayant Patil will be holding a meeting with the officials of the ED submitting a list of pending cases against the leaders who have joined the BJP. The agency might have forgotten these cases. We will only remind them,” said Mr. Malik.
As the State’s Minority Affairs Minister, Mr. Malik heads the Waqf Board.
On Thursday, the ED conducted searches at offices of the Taboot Inam Endowment Trust in Pune’s Mulshi tenshil, registered with the Waqf Board, in an alleged case of financial malfeasance in selling trust land.
“It is my department which registered the FIR against the Trust in August this year. Five people who fraudulently used trust papers and usurped the money over ₹7 crore after the sale to MIDC have been arrested. Now the ED suddenly wants to probe this case. We welcome it wholeheartedly,” Mr. Malik said. He added that his department has registered seven more FIRs across the State and the ED should look in to them as well.
“Ever since I took over the department, we started the clean-up process in Waqf Board. Now, if ED is suddenly interested then detailed investigation will surely put certain BJP leaders in trouble as well. And if BJP thinks that using ED will scare me then they are wrong. I will continue on my exposes about NCB and BJP’s underworld connection,” the Minister said.
