Journalist Rana Ayyub was stopped at the Mumbai airport from boarding a flight to London on Tuesday as the Enforcement Directorate had issued a lookout notice for her.
Ayyub is being investigated in an alleged money laundering case for violation of foreign funding rules while collecting donations for Covid-19 relief.
The federal probe agency wants to question and record Ayyub’s statement but the journalist tweeted that the summons "very curiously" reached her inbox only after she was stopped at the airport.
The 37-year-old scribe reached the Mumbai international airport to board a flight to London but was stopped by immigration authorities. Soon after, an ED team questioned her at the airport and asked her to join the investigation, they said.
"I was stopped today at Mumbai immigration from travelling to deliver this address and onwards to International Journalism Festival to deliver the keynote speech on Indian democracy. I had made this announcement public over weeks, yet the ED (Enforcement Directorate) summon very curiously arrived in my inbox after I was stopped," Ms Ayyub tweeted.
Ayyub had been invited to the UK by the International Centre for Journalists, a Washington-based non-profit, for a lecture on online abuse against women journalists.
Following the summons, she has been asked to depose before the agency at its office in Mumbai on April 1.
Officials said the ED had first issued summons to her after the agency early this year provisionally attached over Rs 1.77 crore in bank deposits in connection with the case against her linked to alleged irregularities in charitable funds raised by her from public donors for COVID-19 relief work during 2020-2021.
However, they said, she skipped the notice and the agency did not want her to leave the country as it could lead to a delay in the probe and the subsequent filing of a charge sheet in court.
The money laundering case against her stems from a September 2021 FIR of Ghaziabad Police (Uttar Pradesh) related to alleged irregularities in donor funds of over Rs 2.69 crore raised by her through an online crowdfunding platform called ‘Ketto’.
Ayyub had rejected the allegations that she “misused” donor funds raised in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying money-laundering charges levelled against her were “preposterous and wholly mala fide”.
- With inputs from PTI
