Excise policy scam: ED summons Sisodia's PA to join probe
Darpan News Desk IANS, 17 Mar, 2023 10:18 AM
New Delhi, March 17 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday summoned Devender Sharma, the personal assistant of former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, for questioning in connection with the now-scrapped excise policy scam case.
Sharma has been asked to appear before the ED on Saturday by 10 a.m.
A source said there are probabilities of confronting him with Sisodia.
The ED has already got Sisodia's custody for five more days.
The ED had earlier said in the court that during questioning, former Secretary C. Arvind, Excise Secretary Arava Gopi Krishna and Sanjay Goyal were confronted together.
The ED, while seeking more custodial remand of Sisodia, has said that C. Arvind had to be confronted again. Apart from him, the ED wants to confront witness Dinesh Arora, and an accused Amit Arora.
The ED has said that it has recovered huge cloud data which they were looking into. It also sought to know about the cell phones of all the accused which went missing.
As of now, the ED has filed two chargesheets in connection with the matter.
The gold biscuits were being smuggled from Manipur to the national capital via Guwahati. On Tuesday, 320 gm gold was seized by the railway police from the same railway station.
The police have arrested six persons in this connection, out of whom two are residents of Liluah in Howrah district, two are from Maharashtra and one from Gujarat. The police suspect that besides running the fake call centre, the arrested persons were also involved in illegal hawala transactions.
A forensic science lab team also reached the spot and inspected the suitcase and the spot where the body was found. The hands and the feet of the victim were tied with a rope, a police officer said, not ruling out the possibility of foul play in the case.
The officials said that some dreaded criminals were lodged in the same ward, adding that Sisodia has not raised any complaint in food or other things so far. Sisodia, who was arrested on February 26 in the Delhi excise policy case, was lodged in the cell on Monday after due formalities which included some medical tests.
Special public prosecutor (SPP) Amit Prasad argued the charges against Poonawala. It was submitted that the accused is a trained chef from Taj Hotel and is aware of preserving the flesh. Poonawala had also ordered dry ice, agarbatti etc. after killing Shraddha Walker, the police said.
Carrying placards, father Balkaur Singh and mother Charan Kaur told the media it has been almost a year of the crime occurrence and the main culprits have not been arrested.They demanded that the case should be investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as crucial witnesses "are being eliminated and nothing is going in their favour."
