The Enforcement Directorate has stated that it is looking into Ayyub’s potential violations of foreign funding rules while collecting donations for Covid-19 relief.
Digital Desk: The Delhi High Court has cleared journalist Rana Ayyub to travel abroad, subject to certain conditions, after being barred from flying to London last week.
Ayyub, a vocal critic of the central government, was stopped at Mumbai airport on Tuesday after being charged with money laundering by the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating the case.
Further, she challenged the move in the Delhi High Court, where the agency filed a resistance on Friday, claiming that the charges against her are “grave.”
Senior advocate Vrinda Grover, who appeared on behalf of Ayyub, submitted that “all money in her bank accounts have been seized. The mala fide is writ large. After February 1, there is no summon by ED and no communication from their side. The ED’s action is nothing but a sham because my client is a critic of the government.”
The Enforcement Directorate has stated that it is looking into Ayyub’s potential violations of foreign funding rules while collecting donations for Covid-19 relief.
However, the journalist tweeted that the summons from the Enforcement Directorate was “very curiously” received in her inbox only after she was disrupted at Mumbai airport.
“I was stopped today at Mumbai immigration from travelling to deliver this address and onwards to International Journalism Festival to deliver the keynote speech on Indian democracy. I had made this announcement public over weeks, yet the ED (Enforcement Directorate) summon very curiously arrived in my inbox after I was stopped,” Ayyub tweeted.
The International Centre for Journalists, a non-profit based in Washington, had invited Ayyub to the UK for a public conversation on online violence against female journalists. Notably, Ayyub frequently tweeted that she was subjected to online abuse and death threats from trolls.
The money laundering case against Ayyub is based on a First Information Report (FIR) filed by Vikas Sankrityayan, the founder of an NGO called “Hindu IT Cell” and a resident of Indirapuram in Ghaziabad, with Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad Police in September.
As per a report attributed to “ED sources,” the agency that investigates financial crimes discovered that the journalist raised over 2.69 crores for charitable purposes between 2020 and 2021 through an online crowdfunding platform called ‘Ketto.’
However, refuting all the allegations, Ayyub stated that “the entire donation received through Ketto has been attributed for, and not a single paisa has been misused.”
However, the ED claimed that its investigation unequivocally proves that the funds were raised in the name of charity in a completely pre-planned and systematic manner and that the funds were not used entirely for the purpose for which they had been raised.
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