Court denies bail to Al-Falah group chief in ED case, says wife’s cancer doesn’t require his care

A Delhi court on Tuesday rejected the interim bail plea of Al-Falah University Chairperson Jawad Ahmad Siddiqui, accused in a Rs 493-crore money laundering case, PTI reported.

Additional Sessions Judge Sheetal Chaudhary Pradhan was hearing Siddiqui’s plea seeking six weeks’ interim bail to look after his wife, who is suffering from stage-4 metastatic ovarian cancer.

The court held that Siddiqui had failed to show that his wife required his exclusive care during cancer treatment. It noted that while Siddiqui's wife was undergoing treatment for a serious ailment, medical records described her condition as stable and did not indicate that she was terminally ill, bedridden or incapable of managing her daily routine.

Siddiqui was arrested by the Delhi Police Crime Branch in February in connection with alleged financial and administrative irregularities at Al-Falah University and was taken into custody by the ED in March.

The Al-Falah group has also been under scrutiny in an investigation linked to the November 10 blast near Delhi’s Red Fort. This was after it emerged that a doctor named Umar Nabi, was believed to have been driving the car that exploded, had been employed by the institution.

The money-laundering case filed by the Enforcement Directorate was based on two first information reports filed by the Delhi Police, which alleged that Al-Falah University had falsely claimed accreditation by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council and misrepresented its eligibility under the University Grants Commission Act.

The University Grants Commission had also said that the Al-Falah University is recognised only as a state private university and has never been eligible for central grants.

The Enforcement Directorate has alleged that Siddiqui played an active role in the “fraudulent misrepresentations to regulators/stakeholders and consequential admissions and fee collections”.

Siddiqui “exercised dominant control over Al-Falah Charitable Trust, Al-Falah University (including Al-Falah School of Medical Sciences and Research Centre) and related entities, and is found a key beneficiary of the unlawful proceeds”, it claimed.

The central agency alleged that as the managing trustee and chancellor, he exercised “complete administrative, financial and operational control, with other office-bearers functioning as nominal or proxy persons”.

More than Rs 110 crore was routed to family-controlled firms, it added.

The Delhi blast

The blast near the Red Fort metro station left 13 persons dead. At least nine persons have been arrested in connection with the blast.

Hours before the blast, the police also said that it had cracked an “inter-state and transnational terror module” in Faridabad and Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur. The police said at the time that it had recovered 2,900 kg of improvised explosive device-making material in raids in several states.

During its investigation, the police had alleged that the key suspects in the case, including Nabi, who was a faculty member, used a room on the Al-Falah Medical College campus in Haryana’s Faridabad to plan logistics for transporting ammonium nitrate for multiple blasts in the National Capital Region.

The college is part of Al-Falah University.