New Delhi: The Rouse Avenue court in Delhi Saturday remanded K. Kavitha — a Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLC and daughter of former Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao — to seven days of Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody in the Delhi excise policy case.
The federal probe agency arrested Kavitha from her residence in Hyderabad Friday and brought her to its headquarters in Delhi for further questioning in the case.
The agency produced her before special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) judge M.K. Nagpal and sought 10-day custody. However, the court, after hours of arguments from both the agency and defence, granted custody for a week, till 23 March.
Responding to the arrest before entering the courtroom, Kavitha called it “illegal” and said it would be challenged in court.
The ED in the past had summoned Kavitha for questioning in this case and alleged that she was part of the “South Group” that paid a kickback of Rs 100 crore to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which it used in the Goa assembly elections.
The ED in its prosecution complaint has alleged that there was an “understanding” between Kavitha and the political leadership of AAP about the expansion of business in Delhi for which the excise policy for 2021-22 was tweaked.
The probe into money laundering allegations in the Delhi liquor scam case stems from a CBI case that alleged irregularities in policy planning and implementation of the excise policy for 2021-22.
Several high-profile AAP leaders, such as former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh are in jail after their arrests by the agency in this case.
Senior advocate Vikram Chaudhary, who represented Kavitha, contended that the ED had violated the undertaking the additional solicitor general had given in the Supreme Court in November last year that the agency wouldn’t take any coercive action against Kavitha until an order by the court.
Kavitha had moved the Supreme Court, challenging the summons issued by the agency in this case. The case is listed for order on 19 March.
“The agency has tried to become the judge, jury and executioner by itself,” Chaudhary argued in the court.
Responding to the arguments, advocate Zoheb Hossain, representing the ED, countered in the court that the “indisputable facts of the case are that the arrestee (Kavitha) doesn’t have an explicit, written order squashing the summons. Neither does she have an explicit order preventing coercive action against her nor has the agency given in writing that there wouldn’t be any coercive action.”
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‘Madam to take 33% commission’
While arguing in favour of the custody and detailing the allegations against Kavitha, advocate Hossain said that the ED had extracted chats between other members of the “South Group”, such as Hyderabad businessman Arun Ramchandra Pillai and Raghav Magunta Reddy, son of a YSR Congress party MP, Magunta Sreenivasulu Reddy, in which they had a conversation about “madam taking 33 percent commission”.
“Arun Pillai was working as a proxy for the arrestee (Kavitha). When confronted with the extracted chats, they conceded the madam in question was the arrestee (Kavitha). She would be confronted with the two people who have named her in their statements record under section 50 of the PMLA,” Hossain argued in the court.
He further alleged that Kavitha had tampered with the evidence by destroying 10 mobile phones so far, of which four were destroyed immediately after the issuance of the first summons seeking her appearance in the probe.
She went on to destroy five more phones, while one phone had “scanty” data, explaining that the data was formatted recently, the advocate added.
Hossain informed the judge that the investigating officers seized a total of five phones during raids Friday, including three of her staff, her husband and herself, and said that the agency was unaware of her using a new phone.
He further informed the court that information from these phones would be extracted on 18 March, for which her husband and staff have been summoned.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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