Punjab drug dealers' Rs 1.23 cr assets frozen for laundering

A special PMLA court in Delhi has attached over Rs 1.23 crore assets and cash of an alleged drug kingpin from Punjab on charges of laundering huge cash sums generated from illegal trade of narcotics.
This is one of the rare cases where agencies have cracked on the illegal narcotic trade and its funds under the stringent provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Alleged peddler Ranjit Singh Kandola is at present in judicial custody as he has been charged by various special units of Punjab and Delhi police for crimes under IPC, Arms Act and anti-narcotics laws.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED), in September last year, had seized ten immovable properties in the name of Kandola in Punjab which includes vast tracts of agricultural lands and Rs 2,26,252 cash in a bank account in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district of the state.
The charge sheets filed by probe agencies stated that Kandola "along with other accused formed a group to smuggle narcotics drugs, who supplied methamphetamine (called ice popularly) and manufactured heroine (drugs) and supplied the same in Jalandhar, other parts of Punjab, big cities of India and also to foreign countries."
The Adjudicating Authority of the PMLA in the national capital, a judicial court to try enforcement cases, termed these assets as derived from "proceeds of crime and involved in money laundering".

"...The defendant (Kandola) has committed the scheduled offences, generated proceeds of crime and laundered them," the court of Authority Member Mukesh Kumar said in its recent order.
An attachment or freezing of assets action under PMLA is aimed to lawfully deprive the accused of the benefits of his or her illegal gained assets.