Panchkula, April 4 -- A special Enforcement Directorate (ED) court in Panchkula on Friday discharged former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Associated Journals Limited (AJL), the publisher of National Herald newspaper, in the 2005 case of alleged illegal allotment of a plot in Panchkula to AJL. The ruling came nearly a month after the Punjab and Haryana high court discharged Hooda on February 25 in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) case, holding that the evidence on record did not even establish a prima facie case of criminality. Proceedings against third accused, Moti Lal Vora, were abated by the special court after his death. Following the discharge in the primary CBI case, special judge Rajeev Goyal also closed ED's money laundering complaint against the accused. ED's probe into the case was based on a predicate offence registered by CBI. Hooda, 78, appeared in person during the proceedings, which effectively terminated a decade of litigation involving allegations of corruption, cheating, and criminal conspiracy. To be sure, separate proceedings are pending before Delhi courts wherein, ED has alleged that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi illegally obtained the underlying assets of AJL, which ran the National Herald newspaper, and acquired crores as direct proceeds of crime. In December, a Delhi court refused to take cognisance of ED charge sheet. Now, the matter is pending before the Delhi high court. Hailing the development, Hooda said the ruling vindicated his long-standing position that the cases were politically motivated and lacked any factual basis. "I have been saying right from the beginning that I have a full faith in the judiciary," he added. ED's probe into the case was based on a CBI case into the same controversy that dates back to 2005, when Hooda was the chief minister. The Haryana vigilance department registered an FIR regarding the alleged land allotment in May 2016, and CBI took over the probe the next year. CBI filed a charge sheet in December 2018 indicting Hooda, Vora and AJL. A special CBI court in Panchkula framed charges against both in 2021 under Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. At the time the CBI's FIR was registered, the late Moti Lal Vora was the chairman of AJL and Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were among the shareholders. The newspaper was launched in 1938 by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister. ED later filed a prosecution complaint before the Panchkula trial court on August 26, 2019. The trial court took note of it on September 26, 2019 and summoned Hooda as an accused. "Hooda and AJL, both have already secured clean chit in predicate case (CBI FIR) from high court. The decision comes in light of Supreme Court judgment in the Vijay Mandanlal Choudhary case in which apex court held, if the person is finally discharged or acquitted of the scheduled offence or the criminal case against him is quashed by the court of competent jurisdiction, there can be no offence of money laundering against him," said Arshdeep Singh Cheema, who appeared with senior advocate RS Cheema in the case, on behalf of Hooda....