New Delhi: Telangana chief minister’s daughter, K. Kavitha, was questioned for nearly nine hours on Saturday, March 11, at the Enforcement Directorate office in Delhi in connection with her alleged role in the Delhi liquor policy case.
Although the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader was supposed to appear before the ED on Friday, March 10, she requested officials to allow her to attend on Saturday, March 11, instead. She had sought permission citing her one-day-long hunger strike at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar for the Women’s Reservation Bill.
Delhi’s former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia is already under ED custody until March 17 in the same case.
The ED is said to have questioned Kavitha – who the probe agency believes to be a key person in the alleged network of middlemen, businessmen and politicians called the “South Group” – based on already recorded statements of her auditor Buchchi Babu, Vijay Nair and Sisodia. She was questioned together with Hyderabad-based businessman Arun Pillai, who is already under arrest, according to the Telugu news portal Eenadu.
It is ED case that South Group gave Rs 100 crore to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government to gain control over the liquor business in Delhi, and the same was used by AAP to fund their election campaign in Goa.
A host of Telangana ministers, including Kavitha’s brother K.T. Rama Rao and her cousin Harish Rao, and a large number of BRS’ supporters descended in Delhi to stage protests in the national capital accusing the Union government of “misusing” central probe agencies to target opposition parties in the country. BRS was also among 14 political parties that had recently signed a letter, drafted by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), to Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing central agencies of “selectively targeting” of opposition.
Ever since Kavitha’s name surfaced in the case, there has been intense speculation in Telangana that her arrest is imminent. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is locked in a battle with Telangana’s ruling BRS, has been sharpening its attack on the BRS chief’s family ahead of Assembly elections in the state later this year.
