Delhi High Court Allows Journalist Rana Ayyub To Travel Abroad

On March 29, 2022, Ayyub was detained in a room next to the immigration counter and informed that immigration agents from the Bureau of Immigration were seeking answers over some "remark" on her file.

Journalist Rana Ayyub. (Source: Getty Images)

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court granted a petition filed by journalist Rana Ayyub against the Enforcement Directorate's decision barring her from leaving the country, citing concerns about evading an ongoing money-laundering investigation.

Big shout out to one of the best lawyers in the country, @vrindagrover and her team Soutik Banerjee, Devika Tulsiani for helping me fight the good fight with just facts and ethics as our defence. Inshallah we will fight this till the very end with just the TRUTH.

— Rana Ayyub (@RanaAyyub) April 4, 2022

Rana Ayyub had petitioned the court to overturn the Enforcement Directorate's decision to bar her from leaving the country. The petition consequently urged that she be allowed to go outside of India, and that any order, Look Out Circular, or instruction barring her from doing so be annulled and set aside.

Ayyub is also slated to travel from London to Rome on April 5, 2022, to deliver the Keynote Speech at the Perugia International Journalism Festival, 2022, where she will speak about the state of journalism in India, and then return to Mumbai via London on April 11, 2022.

According to an NDTV report, senior counsel Vrinda Grover, who spoke on behalf of Ayyub, stated that "all money in her bank accounts have been seized. The mala fide is writ large. After February 1, there is no summon by ED and no communication from their side. The ED's action is nothing but a sham because my client is a critic of the government."

Last year, the Mumbai Zonal Office of the Enforcement Directorate opened an investigation against Ayyub under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) over funds she obtained via crowd financing campaigns on the Ketto platform.

It is Ayyub's argument that she conducted a third crowdfunding campaign on Ketto to support Covid-19-affected individuals across India amid the country's catastrophic second wave of the pandemic.

On March 29, 2022, Ayyub was detained in a room next to the immigration counter and informed that immigration agents from the Bureau of Immigration were seeking answers over some "remark" on her file.

The money laundering complaint against Ayyub is based on a First Information Report (FIR) submitted by Vikas Sankrityayan, the founder of an NGO named "Hindu IT Cell" and a resident of Indirapuram in Ghaziabad, with Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad Police in September.

According to a document referred to "ED sources," the agency that investigates financial crimes discovered that the journalist raised approximately 2.69 crores for charity causes between 2020 and 2021 using an internet crowdfunding site called Ketto.