The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday morning raided the residence of former Punjab Congress Minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu and his close aides, including former Congress Councillor Sunny Bhalla, former LIT chairman Raman Subramanium, Pankaj Meenu Manhotra, and his personal assistant Inderjit Indi.
Several officers from the Department of Food and Supplies have been on the investigative agency’s radar for a while now. On Thursday, the ED conducted raids on close to 20 locations linked to Ashu and his aides in the morning. As per the sources, a raid team, accompanied by para-military forces, reached the former minister’s house in Kochar Market in Ludhiana, and the locations of his aides simultaneously.
About 150 officials are involved in the simultaneous raids in both Ludhiana and Nawanshehr. A heavy police presence was deployed outside the house of the ex-minister and the entire area was cordoned off during the raid. It is pertinent to mention that Ashu was the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Minister in the Congress regime under Captain Amarinder Singh. The case against him is based on a Punjab Vigilance Bureau FIR in which Ashu was also arrested earlier. He was later granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The ED had taken into possession the documents from the Vigilance Department regarding the “food scam”.
