ED searches house of Nagpur lawyer who filed petitions against Devendra Fadnavis

Land transactions also being probed

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday conducted searches at the house of a lawyer who filed several petitions against senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis in the last few years.

The Central agency began searching Nagpur-based lawyer Satish Uke's house around 6 a.m., and searches were also being conducted to probe land transactions.

Mr. Uke is infamous for being charged with criminal contempt by the Bombay High Court on two occasions. In February 2017, the Nagpur Bench of the High Court had directed him to forfeit ₹1 lakh of the ₹2 lakh he had deposited in a criminal contempt case.

The court had observed, "There is a definite, deliberate, motivated and calculated attempt on the part of Satish Uke, which is discernable to bring down the image of the judiciary in the estimation of the public..."

In July 2017, Mr. Uke had filed a petition before the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court and then the Supreme Court seeking Mr. Fadnavis’s disqualification as legislator for his alleged non-disclosure of two criminal cases (forgery and cheating) against him in his 2014 election affidavit.

Mr. Uke had said Mr. Fadnavis withheld this information on the affidavit filed by him before the elections. He said as per the Representation of the People Act, the act of providing false information or concealing of information was a punishable offence with imprisonment up to six months, or fine, or both.

He has also filed a petition into the suspicious death of sessions judge B.H. Loya who was presiding over the trial in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh alleged fake encounter case and had died reportedly due to a heart attack in Nagpur in 2014. Mr. Uke's plea sought a police probe into the death and had made Mr. Fadnavis and BJP leader Amit Shah a party.