Produces phones the agency claimed she had destroyed
PNS|Hyderabad
Called for the second consecutive day, BRS MLC Kavitha walked out of the ED office on Tuesday, after nearly 10 hours of questioning. This is the third time that she has been questioned. The Supreme Court will be hearing her plea on the ED summons on March 24.
On Tuesday, Kavitha said she was submitting the phones used by her so far to the Enforcement Directorate (ED), as she appeared for questioning before the central agency in the Delhi excise policy linked money laundering case.
In her letter to the ED, the 44-year-old daughter of Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao said, “These phones are submitted without prejudice to my right and contentions whether a woman’s phone can be checked as it violates her right to privacy.”
Before she entered the ED’s office here, Kavitha flashed some mobile phones kept in a transparent cover and said she was going to submit them to the ED.
Referring to the agency’s allegation in its first charge-sheet filed in this case last year that she was using at least two mobile phone numbers whose IMEI numbers changed 10 times, Kavitha said, “It is baffling to note as to how, why and under what circumstances the ED made such allegations when I was not even summoned or asked any questions.”
She said that the actions of the ED are exfacie malafide. Accusing the ED of making insinuations against her, she said that she was submitting the phones to dispel the notion or “adverse impression” that the ED had been trying to create.
The “deliberate leakage of false information” to the public, she charged, had led to a political slugfest, and her political adversaries had been using the false charges to accuse her of destroying evidence, causing great harm to her image and attempting to defame her and her political party.
“It is unfortunate that an agency like the ED is becoming a party to these acts and sabotaging its duty to conduct a free and fair investigation at the altar of vested political interests,” she charged.
This is the third deposition of Kavitha before the Central agency. She spent around 18 to 19 hours at the ED headquarters in New Delhi during her two appearances on March 11 and March 20. During the questioning, BRS general secretary Soma Bharat was called to the ED office to reportedly to give authorisation. She was reportedly summoned again, but the ED has not yet communicated the date to her.
Kavitha left the ED office at around 9:15 pm on Monday after she was questioned and her statement was recorded as investigators put around a dozen questions to her.
Kavitha is also understood to have been confronted with the statements made by Hyderabad-based businessman Arun Ramchandran Pillai, an arrested suspect in the case who allegedly has close ties with her, apart from those of others involved in the case.
The politician asserted that she had done nothing wrong and alleged that the BJP-led Centre was “using” the ED as the BJP could not gain a “backdoor entry” into Telangana.
Pillai, the ED had said, “represented the South Group,”an alleged liquor cartel linked to Kavitha and others that paid kickbacks amounting to about Rs 100 crore to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to gain a larger share of the market in New Delhi under the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy for 2020-21.
The ‘South Group’, according to the ED, comprises Sarath Reddy (promoter of Aurobindo Pharma), MaguntaSrinivasulu Reddy (YSR Congress MP from Ongole Lok Sabha seat in Andhra Pradesh), his son Raghav Magunta, Kavitha and some others.
The ED also alleged in Pillai’s remand papers that he “represented the proxy investments” of Kavitha in the case.
Kavitha was earlier questioned by the CBI in connection with the case at her residence in Hyderabad.
The ED has so far arrested 12 people in the case, including former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister AAP leader Manish Sisodia.
It has also recorded the statement of Butchibabu, a chartered accountant, allegedly linked to Kavitha, in which he said that “there was a political understanding between Kavitha and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Deputy Chief Minister Sisodia. In the process, Kavitha also met Vijay Nair on March 19 and 20, 2021.”
Nair was arrested in the case by both the ED and the CBI. Butchibabu has been arrested by the CBI and has been questioned recently again by the ED.
According to Butchibabu’s statement, Nair was “trying to impress Kavitha with what he could do in the (excise) policy.”
“Vijay Nair was acting on behalf of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia,” the statement recorded by ED read.
It is alleged that the Delhi government’s excise policy for 2021-22 to grant licences to liquor traders allowed cartelisation and favoured certain dealers who had allegedly paid bribes for it, a charge strongly refuted by the AAP.
The policy was subsequently scrapped and the Delhi Lieutenant Governor recommended a CBI probe, following which the ED registered a case under the PMLA.
