Hyderabad: As former chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's daughter K. Kavitha is getting ready to file a petition before the Supreme Court to challenge her arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) last week as illegal, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is also probing the Delhi Excise Policy scam case, is all set to act against act action against Kavitha.
Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials, who arrested Kavitha in connection with the Delhi liquor policy scam case, questioned the BRS MLC for a second consecutive day on Monday at ED office, Delhi. A team of officials led by deputy director Bhanupriya Meena, and assistant director Jogender allegedly focused on mobile phones which were used by Kavitha for the past few years but formatted all of them after the CBI registered cases.
It was reported that Kavitha was making allegedly unnecessary, redundant and political statements when she was asked specific questions during the police custody. Kavitha allegedly refused to acknowledge certain chats which showed her association with certain entries. Kavitha allegedly refused to answer, and she reportedly questioned the ED officials about the authenticity of the document.
When the ED officials allegedly questioned Kavitha about nine phones which were formatted and had no data, Kavitha allegedly refused to speak. The BRS MLC further stated that these phones were with her staff and took them back to her staff to produce before the ED. Following Kavitha's statement, the ED asked Kavitha's husband D. Anil Kumar to appear before the ED for questioning. However, Anil Kumar wrote to ED officials that he could not appear before the ED due to his personal reasons.
Kavitha's counsel filed a contempt petition before the Supreme Court challenging the ED's arrest even though one of her petitions is pending before the court. Kavitha alleged that ED deliberately arrested her, and her arrest is illegal. The petitions are likely to be heard on March 19 as the Apex court reserved the judgement on the earlier petition to March 19.
In an official statement, the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) headquarters said that during the search proceedings, the ED officials were obstructed by her relatives and associates.
The statement further stated that the ED investigation revealed that Kavitha along with others conspired with the top leaders of AAP including Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia for getting favours in the Delhi Excise policy-formulation and implementation.
"In exchange for these favours, she was involved in paying Rs. 100 crore to the leaders of AAP. By the acts of corruption and conspiracy in the formulation and implementation of Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22, a continuous stream of illegal funds in the form of kickback, from the wholesalers was generated for the AAP," the ED officials said.
Further, Kavitha and her associates were to recover the proceeds of crime paid in advance to AAP and to further generate profits/proceeds of crime from this entire conspiracy. Till date, the ED has conducted searches on 245 locations across the country including Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and other places. At least 15 persons including Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh and Vijay Nair from AAP have been arrested in the case so far.
ED has filed one Prosecution Complaint and five Supplementary Complaints in the case so far. Further, out of Proceeds of Crime generated, assets worth Rs. 128.79 Crore have been traced so far and have been attached.
