Robert Vadra's questioning by ED in Haryana land deal case to continue today

New Delhi: Businessman Robert Vadra, husband of Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, will on Thursday again join the Enforcement Directorate’s probe into a money laundering case linked to a land deal in Shikohpur, Haryana.

This will be his third day of questioning by the ED. He was questioned for around six hours by the ED on Tuesday, and has been asked to join the probe again on Thursday at 11 a.m.The agency earlier summoned Vadray on April 8 but did not appear.

A second summon was then issued for Tuesday. He has been summoned after some new facts came to light during the investigation into the 2008 land deal, sources have said, adding that the officials will confront him with these new points. His statement is being recorded under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Vadra, brother-in-law of Rahul Gandhi, has denied any wrongdoing, describing the investigation as a “political vendetta”.

On Wednesday, he reached the ED office around 11 a.m., accompanied by his wife Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the Congress MP from Kerala’s Wayanad. They hugged each other before Robert Vadra entered the office. Priyanka Gandhi stayed in the visitors’ room of the agency’s office, ‘Pravartan Bhawan’, at the APJ Abdul Kalam Road throughout the questioning.

Sources have said that Vadra has been confronted with about a dozen questions during the 10 hours he spent at the ED office over two days. Vadra on Wednesday accused the government of stopping him from “doing good work and speaking about their unjust behaviour towards minorities”.

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He has said that he is innocent and that ‘truth will prevail.’ In a Facebook post, Vadra said that his birthday week seva had been hampered by the ED summoning him. “My Birthday Week Seva has been paused for a few days. Plans I have made for feeding the elderly and gifts for all the children in different areas will be continued as soon as I get over the “Government’s ways of stopping Me”, from doing good and speaking about their unjust behavior towards minorities, or if there are even wishes and talks of me being in politics,” wrote Vadra.

He said that nothing was going to deter him from fulfilling people’s wishes and needs. “I’m here for any kind of unjust pressure. I believe in the truth, and truth will prevail,” he said in the post. The case pertains to a land purchase in February 2008 for Rs 7.5 crore by Vadra’s Skylight Hospitality in Shikohpur in Haryana’s Gurugram district. The mutation process, which usually takes months, was done the next day. Months later, he received a permit to develop a housing society on the land, and the value of the plot increased.

He sold it to DLF in June at Rs 58 crore. Suspecting the proceeds to be part of a money laundering scheme, the ED has been probing the trail behind the windfall gains. The deals were made when Congress was at the helm in the state, and Bhupinder Singh Hooda was the chief minister.

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