The Enforcement Directorate on Friday conducted fresh searches in Punjab and Haryana as part of a money laundering investigation into a ‘donkey route’ case related to illegal Indian immigrants who were deported by the US this year, official sources said.

Raids are being undertaken at seven locations at Mansa in Punjab and Kurukshetra and Karnal in Haryana under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), they said.

The latest raids are based on “credible” inputs gathered during the first round of searches conducted on July 9 at 11 locations in these two states, the sources said. Post the July 9 searches, the federal probe agency on Thursday said in a statement that it has recovered 30 original passports and got hold of the names of various agents and immigration agencies running the “donkey route” business of sending Indians abroad illegally on a “large-scale”. Inputs gathered shows that human traffickers were used to arrange illegal route resources outside India in connivance with donkers (human trafficking conduits), the sources said.