Hyderabad (Telangana): K Kavitha, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader and daughter of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, was questioned for nine hours by the Enforcement Directorate in the Delhi liquor policy case.
A key focus of the investigation into the Delhi liquor policy case is on an alleged network of middlemen, businessmen and politicians which the central agencies have called the “South Group”.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia is already under the ED’s custody in the same case. He was also arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for alleged corruption in framing Delhi’s new liquor policy, which was later scrapped.
The Enforcement Directorate summoned Kavitha for further questioning.
Earlier in the day, serval posters surfaced on walls across Hyderabad calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “destroyer of democracy” and “grandfather of hypocrisy”.
Some posters featured leaders who joined BJP from others parties and Kavitha on the other hand.
Earlier, Kavitha had asked the federal probe agency to postpone her questioning to Saturday, citing her hunger strike in Delhi on Friday. The central agency agreed to her request and rescheduled the questioning.
Kavitha arrived in the national capital on March 8, hours after the ED issued a summons for questioning.
Reports earlier said Kavitha will be made to sit face-to-face with Hyderabad-based businessman Arun Ramchandra Pillai, who was arrested in connection with the liquor policy case on Monday night.
She called the summons “tactics of intimidation” by the federal government against the Chandrasekhar Rao and the BRS, adding that the party will continue to fight and expose the government’s failures and will raise its voice for a brighter and better future for India.
“I would also like the ruling party at the Centre to know that these tactics of intimidation against the fight and voice of our leader, CM KCR, and against the entire BRS party will not deter us. Under the leadership of KCR Garu, we will continue to fight to expose your failures and raise voice for a brighter and better future for India,” Kavitha said in a tweet.
'Politically motivated'
Referring to the summons as “politically motivated”, BRS leader Ravula Sridhar Reddy had said that except ED and BJP, nobody really understands the case registered in connection with the new-withdrawn new Delhi excise policy.
In its investigation, ED has come to know that Pillai is one of the key persons in the entire scam involving payments of huge kickbacks and the formation of the biggest cartel of the South Group.
South Group comprises Telangana MLC Kavitha, Sarath Reddy (promoter of Aurobindo Group), Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy (MP, Ongole), his son Raghav Magunta, and others. The South Group was being represented by Pillai, Abhishek Boinpalli and Butchi Babu, the federal agency investigation has revealed.
Pillai along with his associates was coordinating with various persons to execute the political understanding between the South Group and a leader of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Pillai has been an accomplice and was involved in the kickbacks from the South Group and the recoupment of the same from the businesses in Delhi, ED investigation reveals.
The ED had earlier said that the South Group gave kickbacks of Rs100 crore (Rs1 billion) to AAP leaders.
Pillai is learnt to be a partner of 32.5 per cent in Indo Spirits, which had got an L1 licence. Indo Spirits is a partnership firm of Arun Pillai (32.5 per cent), Prem Rahul (32.5 per cent) and Indospirit Distribution Limited (35 per cent), wherein Arun Pillai and Prem Rahul represented the benami investments of Kavitha and Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy and his son Raghava Magunta.
Kavitha, a Telangana Legislative Council member, was questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the same case in December last year. The excise policy was passed in Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi Cabinet in the middle of the deadly Delta Covid-19 pandemic in 2021.
