Bengaluru: Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee President, D.K. Shivakumar, and his brother and Bengaluru Rural Lok Sabha MP, D.K. Suresh, appeared before the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) on Wednesday on charges of accumulating wealth disproportionate to their income.
DK Shi was quizzed for about one hour and was allowed to leave.
Speaking to reporters before leaving for the CBI office in Gangenhalli in the city, Shivakumar asserted that he and his family would cooperate with the probe agency to any extent.
“We are cooperating with them and none of my family members will ever question the style of function of these central agencies. Let them do their duty,” he said, visibly irked over being sent the summon on the day of his daughter’s engagement.
“They (CBI sleuths) had come on the day of my daughter’s engagement. As the family was not available, they waited and served the notice to me and my brother the next day,” he said.
He further charged that this was nothing but a malicious campaign and the ruling party in the Centre is trying its best to use central agencies to pressurise his family to succumb to them.
Training his guns on the ruling BJP at the centre, Shivakumar said, “Am I the only person or the only family in this state which is earning money? Why am I only being targeted? This in itself is a case in point to ponder over the Central Government and state government ruled by the BJP suggest that they are practicing nothing but a vendetta politics.”
It is worth noting here that on October 5, the CBI had conducted raids at 14 locations, including in Karnataka, Delhi and Mumbai at the premises belonging to Shivakumar and others, and recovered Rs 57 lakh cash and several documents, including property documents, bank related information, computer hard disk.
The agency had also registered a case against Shivakumar and his family members for allegedly possessing disproportionate assets worth Rs 74.93 crore.
The probe agency had earlier asked the Congress leader to be present before it on November 23, but he requested the agency, saying that he will be in Maski and Basavakalyana Assembly constituencies on that day, where bypolls are likely to be announced soon.
In September last year, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had arrested Shivakumar in a money laundering case after interrogating him for five consecutive days.
Shivakumar had been consistently claiming that he had been framed by the Central agencies for his role in shifting Gujarat Congress MLAs to a Karnataka resort during the Rajya Sabha elections in 2017, fearing a possible poaching attempt by the BJP.
In 2018, the ED had registered a case against Shivakumar and others on the basis of chargesheet (prosecution complaint) filed by the Income Tax Department in a court for their alleged role in tax evasion and hawala transactions worth crores.
The CBI had served summons to Shivakumar and his brother to appear before them on the day of Shivakumar’s elder daughter, Aisshwarya got engaged to BJP senior leader, S.M. Krishna’s grandson, Amartya Hegde, on November 19.
