ED arrests lawyer who filed petitions against Fadnavis

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday arrested Nagpur-based lawyer Satish Uke and his brother Pradeep in connection with a money laundering investigation, officials said.

Uke had filed petitions against senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis over the last few years.

Officials said the brothers were taken into custody under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and were expected to be produced before a court on Friday.

Uke's residence in the Parvati Nagar area of Nagpur was raided by the central probe agency around 6 am.

The raid team was escorted by a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) team.

Officials claimed the money laundering case against the brothers is related to the purchase of about 1.5 acre land in Nagpur sometime ago and the documents used for the land purchase were allegedly forged.

The land that was purchased was in the name of the brothers, they said.

The lawyer and his brother were later taken to the ED's office in Seminary Hills area of Nagpur for interrogation around 11 am.

A police official said the ED team took along Satish Uke's laptop, some documents and four cellphones belonging to his family members to the ED office for examination.

The lawyer has filed several petitions in courts against BJP leaders, especially Fadnavis.

In one of his applications, he had sought criminal proceedings against Fadnavis for the 'non-disclosure' of criminal cases in his election affidavit.

Uke has alleged that the BJP leader filed a false affidavit in 2014 by hiding two criminal cases - of cheating and forgery - registered against him in 1996 and 1998.

He had also petitioned the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court seeking a police probe into the 'suspicious and untimely' death of Central Bureau of Investigation judge B H Loya.

Judge Loya, who was presiding over the trial in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh alleged fake encounter case, had died reportedly due to a heart attack in Nagpur in 2014.

Satish Uke is also the lawyer for Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole, who has filed a Rs 500 crore defamation suit in a civil court in Nagpur against IPS officer and former state intelligence chief Rashmi Shukla and others for alleged illegal tapping of his phone.