Chandigarh: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday arrested the former Congress MLA Dharam Singh Chhoker in connection with a Rs 1,500 crore money laundering case. He was arrested from a hotel in Delhi.
Chhoker has been a two-time MLA from Samalka constituency in Panipat. He was elected for the first time in 2009 on the then Haryana Janhit Congress ticket, but had later joined Congress; he won second time on Congress ticket in 2019. He is said to be a close aide of former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
His arrest follows an ongoing investigation of ED in which his son Sikander Chhoker was also arrested in the same case in which the ED suspects large-scale financial irregularities involving real estate and other sectors. The agency had initiated its probe based on FIRs registered by Gurugram police in 2023.
Chhoker was accused of having collected over Rs 363 crore from about 1,500 home buyers under affordable housing scheme in Gurugram through the firms owned by him and his sons – Vikas and Sikander Chhoker but failed to deliver by 2022. The home buyers held protests against the firms owned by Chhoker and his sons and lodged police complaints.
According to reports, ED found in its probe that company directors siphoned off buyers’ money by booking fake expenditure in group entities and received the same back providing fake bills. The ED had also seized the properties, offices, jewelry, vehicles and cash worth crores of rupees in 2023.
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