The ED informed the Bombay High Court on Thursday that it wouldn’t enforce eviction notices issued to actor Shilpa Shetty and her husband, Raj Kundra, until their application challenging a property attachment order is heard by an appellate tribunal.
On September 27, the ED directed the couple to vacate their home in Mumbai’s Juhu area and a farmhouse in Pune as part of a money laundering investigation. Shetty and Kundra subsequently challenged these notices in court, describing them as arbitrary and illegal.
A division bench, consisting of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Prithviraj Chavan, questioned the urgency of the eviction notices, especially since the couple has a legal avenue to appeal the attachment order. On Thursday, the ED stated that it would hold off on acting upon the eviction notices until the couple files their appeal.
The court accepted this statement and stipulated that if the tribunal issues an adverse order, the eviction notices will not take effect for two weeks afterward, leading to the dismissal of the petitions.
In their legal filings, Shetty and Kundra argued that the notices, which required them to vacate their premises within ten days, were uncalled for and lacked urgency.
Their lawyer, Prashant Patil, emphasized that the couple had lived in their home with their family for nearly two decades and sought to have the eviction notices quashed on humanitarian grounds.
The ED’s case stems from a 2018 complaint against an individual named Amit Bhardwaj and others, linked to an alleged Bitcoin fraud and subsequent money laundering charges. Notably, Shetty and Kundra are not named as accused in this case. Kundra has cooperated with the ED by appearing for questioning multiple times.
In April 2024, the couple received a notice regarding the provisional attachment of their assets, including their residential property, which Kundra’s father purchased in 2009.
Despite submitting a response, the adjudicating authority confirmed the attachment order on September 18, 2024, pending the trial’s conclusion.
The couple’s petitions assert that no eviction order should be issued before a conviction, stressing that their residential premises are unrelated to the alleged offense or any proceeds of crime.
They further claimed that Kundra has no connection to the alleged fraud.
