2 min readSrinagarMar 6, 2026 08:30 PM IST
The court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Srinagar, dismissed a petition by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) seeking to add charges in a case involving former J&K chief minister and NC president Farooq Abdullah and three others.
The order, issued March 2, stated that a chargesheet has been filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in this case and therefore the Enforcement Directorate is “neither the investigating agency nor the prosecution agency (CBI) in the instant case.”
Noting that the ED can initiate action only upon the existence of a “predicate offence” and cannot act on its own, the CJM said that as per law, “if the ED comes across a violation of law, it cannot assume the role of an investigating agency and the ED has the duty to inform the appropriate agency, which would commence an investigation.”
In the current case, the order states, “there is nothing on record which suggests that the ED has informed the CBI about the commission of the offence under Section 411 & 424 the RPC”.
The case pertains to alleged irregularities in grants given by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to JKCA at a time when Abdullah was president. According to investigators, between 2002 and 2011, Rs 43 crore of the Rs 112 crore grant given to the JKCA was siphoned off.
A special team of the erstwhile state’s police began investigating the allegations in 2012 but when it failed to complete the probe even after three years, two cricketers, Majid Yaqoob Dar and Nissar Ahmad Khan, approached the Jammu and Kashmir High Court with a PIL. On September 3, 2015, the court handed over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
It was based on the CBI case that the ED registered its money laundering case.
