The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Maharashtra minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Nawab Malik on Wednesday.

Malik was taken to a government hospital for a medical checkup before being brought before the special PMLA court. Senior attorney Amit Desai and Taraq Sayed argued on Malik’s behalf.

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According to the minister, ED officers arrived at his house and forcibly brought him to their ED office. “Later, they brought me the summons and told me I was arrested,” Malik said from the witness stand.

The NCP leader, who was jailed after seven hours of questioning, stated while being transported to the hospital that he would not bend down and expose everyone. “Jhukenge nahi, darenge nahi, expose karenge.”

A while later, he made a similar assertion in a tweet.

According to accounts, the seasoned NCP leader was not cooperative throughout the interrogation.

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Meanwhile, NCP workers gathered outside the Enforcement Directorate building and began chanting pro-Malik chants.

Officials claimed the 62-year-old Maharashtra minister was being questioned in a money-laundering investigation connected to the operations of the Mumbai underworld, fugitive criminal Dawood Ibrahim, and his associates. He had arrived at the ED’s south Mumbai headquarters in the Ballard Estate neighbourhood about 8 a.m. and had been interrogated since then.

Also Read | Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik arrested by ED; claims political vendetta

Earlier, NCP MP Supriya Sule stated that Maharashtra had never bowed down to the Centre and would never do so again, adding that the state’s governing camp was not startled by the central agency’s conduct. The Lok Sabha member expressed regret that the Centre was deploying its machinery in a “suppressive” way against the BJP‘s political adversaries.

This is the second arrest of a prominent minister in the NCP-Shiv SenaINC coalition administration.