Chandigarh, Oct. 17 -- The Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday dismissed the bail plea of Punjab minister Sanjeev Arora in a money laundering case linked to an alleged Rs.100-crore GST fraud. The 62-year-old businessman-turned-politician, who has been in custody since his arrest on May 9, had approached the high court in July. He is lodged in a Gurugram jail. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) case registered in May stems from an FIR registered by Gurugram police under the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). Arora held the portfolios of power, industry and commerce. After his arrest, chief minister Bhagwant Mann had allocated his portfolios to other ministers. The ED has alleged that Arora was chairman and managing director of the accused company, M/s HSRL, until August 2025. In 2023, M/s HSRL, despite having no experience in the mobile-phone business, abruptly began exporting mobile phones, predominantly iPhones, and discontinued such exports in 2024. According to the ED, the accused company generated 43 export shipping bills, declaring total exports of Rs.102 crore exclusively to two UAE-based companies. The agency alleged that fake purchase invoices were utilised to wrongfully claim and obtain fraudulent input tax credit/GST refunds of Rs.15 crore and duty drawback of 48 crore from the government treasury, while Rs.86 crore was received by way of foreign inward remittances into a dedicated bank account. The court rejected the petitioner's contention that no person was cheated and no wrongful gain has been established. "The IGST refund on exports, to the tune of Rs.15.63 crore, was allegedly obtained on the basis of a fraudulent misrepresentation that genuine exports had taken place. Consequently, the same resulted in wrongful gain to the petitioner and wrongful loss to the GST department," the court observed. It observed that a cumulative reading of the FIR, ECIR and the material collected during investigation prima facie discloses a "well-structured and premeditated modus operandi adopted by the petitioner and his associates for generation, layering and integration of proceeds of crime through a network of interconnected entities". The court rejected the bail plea, observing that the investigation prima facie establishes the petitioner's "involvement, from the inception, in the generation of fictitious invoices through his accomplice", as well as in "a pre-planned illegal mechanism" designed to channel large transaction volumes through M/s HSRL's accounts without any corresponding genuine transactions....