Jacqueline Fernandez has approached the Delhi High Court for quashing of a criminal case and a supplementary chargesheet submitted by the ED in an alleged 200 crore money laundering case involving suspected conman Sukesh Chandrasekhar.
Fernandez was named as a co-accused in the ED’s case. However, she has been named a witness in the predicate offence, an extortion case filed by the Delhi police.
The Economic Offenses Wing (EOW) of the Delhi Police filed an extortion case against Chandrasekhar in August of last year for allegedly cheating and extorting money from Aditi Singh, the wife of former Religare Enterprises promoter Shivinder Mohan Singh. This led to the lodging of an ED FIR.
The actress has filed a plea to quash the ECIR dated August 8, 2021, the second supplementary complaint dated August 17, 2022, and the procedures that have resulted from them, claiming that the evidence provided by the ED shows that she is an innocent victim of Chandrasekhar’s maliciously targeted attack.
“There is absolutely no indication of her involvement in aiding him to launder his purportedly ill-gotten wealth,” read the plea.
According to the plea, she was instead presented as a prosecution witness in the EOW case.
“Throughout their interactions, the main accused consistently presented himself as a free individual. The Petitioner had no way of knowing that the main accused was actually incarcerated, as his conduct always resembled that of a person at liberty,” the plea added.