PK Halder’s remand period extended again by 14 days

A special court in Kolkata today extended the judicial custody of Prashanta Kumar Halder, former MD of NRB Global Bank, to 14 more days in connection with a case of money laundering in India.

India's Enforcement Directorate (ED) said more time was required for questioning PK Halder and confronting him with evidence in order to get to the bottom of the wide network of properties amassed by Halder in West Bengal and other parts of India, and how he made that after sneaking into the country from Bangladesh in 2019.

The 14-day tenure of the previous judicial custody of Halder and five of his associates expired today.

Halder was arrested along with five others on May 14 after the ED conducted raids in 11 premises in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal on a tip-off by Bangladesh's Financial Intelligence Unit.

The ED, which handles money laundering and foreign exchange cases, had carried out search operations at the 11 premises linked to PK Halder and Pritish Kumar Halder.

PK Halder was living in India under the alias of an Indian citizen, Shibshankar Halder.

The searches revealed that he along with his other associates fraudulently obtained various government identities like ration card from the authorities in West Bengal, Indian Voter ID card, PAN and Aadhar card.

According to the ED, the Bangladeshi nationals have also managed to float companies in India on the basis of fraudulently obtained identities and have even purchased properties in West Bengal, which constitute an offence under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.

PK Halder has been found to be accused in approximately Tk 10,000 crore bank fraud in Bangladesh and allegedly syphoned off money to various countries.

Besides Bangladesh and Indian passports, he was also found in possession of a Grenada passport.

The others arrested along with PK Halder and Pranesh Kumar Halder are Swapan Maitra, Uttam Maitra, Imam Hossian, and Amana Sultana.