Rahul Gandhi and around 50 Congress MPs were on Tuesday detained by Delhi Police at Vijay Chowk while they were marching to Rashtrapati Bhavan in protest against the questioning of Sonia Gandhi by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the National Herald case. “India is a police state now. That’s the truth. PM Modi is a king, and this is a police state. What will happen if MPs cannot meet the President?” said Rahul condemning the police action. Among the senior Congress detained by the police are Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge, Ranjeet Ranjan, KC Venugopal, Manickam Tagore, Imran Pratapgarhi and K Suresh.
“All (Congress) MPs came here. They talked about inflation, unemployment. They are not allowing us to sit here. Discussions are not allowed inside the Parliament and here they are arresting us,” the Congress MP further said. The police stopped all Congress leaders including Rahul at Rajiv Chowk in New Delhi as they were marching toward the Rashtrapati Bhavan to register their protest against what they call “political vendetta” by the Centre against opposition leaders. Rahul staged a sit in at Rajiv Chowk after police stopped their march.
Slamming the Centre for muzzling the opposition in the country, Kharge said, “We are protesting as per the instruction of the police. All of this is a conspiracy by PM Modi and Amit Shah to completely destroy the Opposition and muzzle our voices. We won’t be scared. Our fight will continue.” His party colleague and Rajya Sabha MP Deepender Hooda said, “We had demanded that there be discussion in Parliament on inflation, unemployment, Agnipath and misuse of agencies. Government rejected it. We said we will protest at Rajghat on this, but weren’t permitted. We said that we will give memorandum to President. They didn’t permit.” Amid nation-wide protests by Congress leaders and workers, ED officials on Tuesday began the second round of questioning around 11:30 after Sonia arrived at the agency’s headquarters in Central Delhi accompanied by daughter Priyanka.
The Congress interim president was questioned for about two and a half hours by ED interrogators in the first session. She joined the interrogation at about 3:30 after lunch break. ED had questioned Sonia for about two hours on 21 July in the first round. Several Congress leaders were detained as the party put a show of strength by staging nationwide demonstrations in support of their leader.
The case to investigate alleged financial irregularities under the PMLA was registered about nine months ago after a trial court took cognisance of an Income Tax Department probe carried out on the basis of a private criminal complaint filed by former BJP MP Subramanian Swamy in 2013. Swamy had approached the court alleging that the assets of Associated Journals Limited (AJL), which published the National Herald newspaper, were fraudulently acquired and transferred to Young Indian Pvt Limited (YIL), in which Sonia Gandhi and her son owned 38 per cent shares each. Swamy had alleged that the Gandhis cheated and misappropriated funds, with YIL paying only Rs. 50 lakh to obtain the right to recover Rs. 90.25 cr that AJL owed to Congress. Last month the ED had also questioned Rahul on several occasions in the case. The central agency’s move followed the questioning of senior Congress leader Kharge and Congress treasurer Pawan Bansal in April this year