A Delhi court has expressed "anguish" over the Enforcement Directorate's "casual and cavalier approach" to investigating a money laundering case. These observations were made by Special Judge Dharmender Rana while granting bail to a businessman Jatinder Pal Singh in a case of money laundering related to a corruption deal, as it discovered various discrepancies in the investigation and the arguments made before the court "Before proceeding to the merits, I must state unequivocally that the conduct of ED in the instant matter is highly disappointing, if not deplorable, as suggested by the defense. "In its zeal to ensure the sustained detention of the applicant/accused, ED seems to have thrown out the baby with the water,” the judge said. According to the ED, Singh purchased cloth worth Rs 6.60 crore from Astonishing Pvt Ltd and sold it to Shree Shyam Dhani Trading Company, a proprietorship concern of one Sanjay Kumar, for Rs 12.23 crore. The ED claimed that both Astonishing Private Limited and Shree Shyam Dhani Trading Company are bogus and untraceable. "In my considered opinion, the activities attributable to accused are merely layering activities, and accused appears to be a mere cog in the wheel," the judge wrote in the January 17 order. He stated that in such cases, the focus of the investigation should be the source of money used to purchase the fabric, to determine whether or not the money came from a tainted source. “However, unfortunately, instead of focusing upon the source of money, accused is the focus of investigation in the instant matter,” the judge noted. He also noted that having failed to identify the source of the money and inform the court whether it came from a tainted source or not, the ED improved on its case during arguments and came up with an entirely different contention that the 'commission generated' by the accused on account of fabric shown to have been sold off by them to Shree Shyam Dhani Trading Company was the proceeds of crime in the instant case. “However, if the said contention is accepted to be correct and the proceeds of crime in the instant matter is admitted to be the commission generated, the very arrest of accused in the case at hand becomes seriously questionable,” the judge said.