Rahul Gandhi summoned by ED in National Herald case for 5th time
Darpan News Desk IANS, 20 Jun, 2022 10:51 AM
New Delhi, June 20 (IANS) Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been summoned on Tuesday - for the fifth time - by the Enforcement Directorate for questioning the investigation in connection with its probe in the National Herald case.
Till now, he has been questioned for about 40 hours by the anti-money laundering agency, including on Monday.
Gandhi was reportedly questioned about a few transactions made by Kolkata-based Dotex Merchandise Pvt Ltd.
Earlier, the Congress leader had denied having knowledge of any sort of loan taken by Young Indian, according to ED sources. In fact, he is reported to have told the ED that he was not aware of the accommodation entry of YI.
Gandhi also said that the late Congress Treasurer Motilal Vora was engaged in all these sorts of affairs. Vora held 12 per cent stake in YI, while Rahul Gandhi and his mother and party chief Sonia Gandhi had 76 per cent stake.
"Gandhi said he had no knowledge of YI-AJL deal as Vora was looking after it," a sources said.
Sonia Gandhi, who was in hospital for Covid related health issues, has also been summoned on June 23 in the same case.
India on Tuesday recorded 1,68,063 new Covid cases, taking the total tally to 8,21,446. Although the fresh infections were 6.4 per cent less than Monday when the country logged 1,79,723, the weekly positivity rate has climbed to 8.85 per cent and the daily positivity rate has declined to 10.64 per cent. On the other hand, 4,461 Omicron cases were recorded from 28 states.
Delhi reported a 25 per cent surge in Covid-19 cases after recording 19,166 fresh cases. With this, the infection tally has climbed to 15,68,896. Meanwhile, the city has recorded 17 Covid deaths on the second consecutive day, pushing the death toll to 25,177.
On Monday, after a detailed hearing in the matter, a bench, headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana and comprising Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli, said the court will set up a committee headed by a retired top court judge to probe the PM's security breach and asked both the Centre and Punjab government to not move ahead with their respective inquiries into the matter.
Several Supreme Court advocates on Monday claimed to have received an international call with a recorded message asking the apex court not to help the Central government by taking up a case connected with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's security breach in Punjab last week.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress are projected to poll 40 per cent and 36 per cent votes in Punjab, respectively, as per the ABP-CVOTER Battle for the States survey. The 117-member Punjab Assembly will go to the polls on February 14, and the counting of votes will be taken up on March 10.
The highest quantity has been procured from Punjab (1,86,85,53 MT) followed by Chhattisgarh (67,65,986 MT) and Telangana (65,54,739 MT) while the highest number of farmers benefitted in are Chhattisgarh (16,90,459), Telangana (9,67,134) and Punjab (9,24,299).
