Actor Shilpa Shetty and her husband, businessman Raj Kundra, have approached the Bombay High Court on Wednesday to contest notices from the ED demanding their eviction from their Juhu residence in Mumbai and a farmhouse in Pune.
These notices are linked to an ongoing money-laundering investigation associated with an alleged Bitcoin fraud.
The couple’s petitions were heard by a division bench comprising Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Prithviraj Chavan. The court has issued a notice to the ED and scheduled a follow-up hearing for Thursday.
The eviction notices, dated September 27, require Shetty and Kundra to vacate their properties within ten days. Their lawyer, Prashant Patil, argued that the notices were arbitrary and illegal, asserting that they should be quashed. He also noted that the couple only received the eviction notices on October 3.
In their petitions, Shetty and Kundra highlighted that there is no urgent need for them to vacate their home, where they have lived with their family for nearly two decades. They requested the court to stay the eviction notices on humanitarian grounds.
The petitions indicate that the ED has been investigating a complaint from 2018 related to Amit Bhardwaj and others for alleged Bitcoin fraud and money laundering. Importantly, neither Shetty nor Kundra has been named as accused in this case. Kundra has reportedly complied with multiple summons from the ED.
In April 2024, the couple received a notice regarding the provisional attachment of their assets, including their Juhu home, which was purchased by Kundra’s father in 2009. They submitted their responses to this notice.
However, on September 18, 2024, the adjudicating authority confirmed the provisional attachment, stating that it would remain in effect until the conclusion of the trial.
The recent eviction notices were issued after this confirmation. The couple’s petitions assert that no eviction can be enforced without a prior conviction and maintain that their residential property is not connected to any criminal activity or proceeds of crime. They further emphasized that Kundra has no ties to the alleged fraud.
