The Enforcement Directorate (ED) launched a series of dawn raids Monday across Chandigarh and Haryana’s capital region, targeting four residential and commercial properties belonging to former state minister Gopal Kanda. The operation is part of a money laundering probe triggered by a complaint from the Haryana Real Estate Regulatory Authority (Haryana RERA) alleging that Kanda, who previously headed the food and civil supplies portfolio in the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government, orchestrated a scheme around four housing projects. Authorities say the ventures collected ₹248.46 crore from 661 investors since roughly 2015, yet neither possession nor sale deeds were ever delivered. The ED is now moving to seize financial records, property papers, and electronic devices to trace whether investor funds were channeled through shell companies or layered across other real estate transactions.
Kanda, a veteran Congress leader who lost his assembly seat in 2014, has denied wrongdoing. His lawyers describe the raids as politically motivated harassment, arguing that the projects are involved in routine land-acquisition disputes and that Kanda has cooperated with all regulatory inquiries. Enforcement sources, however, stress that the scale of unpaid refunds and the volume of complainants justify a strict PMLA prosecution. The four sites under investigation—collectively branded as Sunny Enclave, Green Valley, Royal Residency, and Comfort Heights—were aggressively marketed across Delhi-NCR and neighboring districts, with promises of ready possession within two years.
The case has drawn renewed attention to Haryana’s faltering real estate sector, which has seen dozens of stalled developments and mounting investor grievances in recent years. Consumer advocates have praised the ED’s intervention as a overdue signal that political connections will no longer shield builders from accountability. Legal experts note that if money laundering charges are sustained, the verdict could set a precedent for how enforcement agencies treat collective investor losses in high-value housing scams.
