Chandigarh, May 16 -- Punjab cabinet minister Sanjeev Arora on Friday said the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officer, who was the complainant in a criminal case registered against him under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) on April 18, also conducted the raid at his Chandigarh house on May 9 and arrested him in a money laundering case. "...this goes directly to the violation of statutory law as well as constitutional laws. After the predicate offence (is reported), there has to be an independent opinion based on the material on record (before ED decides to arrest a person). The officer who's the complainant against me (in the FEMA case) could not have been my arresting officer under Section 19 of PMLA. So, he is basically a judge in his own cause and totally prejudiced," senior advocate Puneet Bali said while appearing for the Punjab minister before the Punjab and Haryana high court. He emphasised that the arrest goes against the mandate of Section 19 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), as the officer who decides to arrest a person has to form an independent opinion. Arora, 62, the promoter and erstwhile chairman of M/S Hampton Sky Realty Limited, formerly known as M/S Ritesh Properties and Industries Limited, was arrested by the ED on May 9. He has sought quashing of the May 9 remand order passed by the Special PMLA court in Gurugram, along with the grounds of arrest and all consequential proceedings arising out of the ED case. The FEMA case was registered on April 18. ED alleges that Arora was involved in laundering Rs.157.2 crore by showing export of mobile phones from May 2023 to October 2023 via a Gurugram-based real estate firm to foreign countries, which existed merely on paper to enable inwards remittance via the banking channel to show them as a legitimate source of income. ED has also alleged that shell firms were used to show the exports of at least 44,000 mobiles, mostly iPhones, during the period when Arora was the chief managing director of the firm. Bali also demanded that the case record be sealed or summoned to court in a sealed cover to ascertain the reasons based on which the officer decided to conduct a raid after ECIR was registered by ED on May 5. "This becomes all the more important since the petitioner is alleging political vendetta," Bali told the court, adding that the times in which these developments are taking place should be taken into consideration, as some MPs of the AAP have left to join BJP and the petitioner has "stuck to his guns." Towards the end of the hearing, Bali also pressed for an interim relief. The ED's counsel, Zoheb Hossain, raised an objection. In view of this, the court deferred the hearing to Monday when the ED is likely to begin its arguments....