Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty and her husband, businessman Raj Kundra, have approached the Bombay High Court challenging eviction notices issued by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a money laundering case. The ED’s notices demand that the couple vacate their Mumbai residence in Juhu and a farmhouse in Pune.
Their petitions, which came up for hearing before Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Prithviraj Chavan on Wednesday, contest the ED’s order dated September 27, which gave them ten days to vacate their properties. The court has issued a notice to the ED and scheduled the next hearing for Thursday.
The notices are linked to a money-laundering investigation involving an alleged Bitcoin fraud from 2018. Although neither Shetty nor Kundra is named as accused in the case, the ED provisionally attached their assets, including their Juhu residence, which Kundra’s father purchased in 2009.
According to the pleas, the couple received the eviction notices on October 3, and their lawyer, Prashant Patil, argued that the order was arbitrary, illegal, and unnecessary. The couple has been living in their Juhu home with their family for nearly two decades and is seeking relief on humanitarian grounds.
The ED had summoned Kundra multiple times for questioning during its probe, but as of now, neither he nor Shetty has been charged. Despite this, the ED’s adjudicating authority confirmed the provisional attachment of their assets in September 2024, stating that the attachment is valid only until the conclusion of the trial.
The couple’s petitions assert that there is no urgency for eviction and that their residence is unrelated to the alleged fraud or proceeds of crime. They argue that eviction orders cannot be issued prior to a conviction.
