ED grills Vadra for over 5 hrs; wife Priyanka says ''I stand by my family''

Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, February 6

Robert Vadra, the brother-in-law of Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, was Wednesday questioned by Enforcement Directorate here for about five-and-a-half-hours in its money laundering probe into alleged possession of illegal foreign assets, days after he was directed by a city court to appear before the central probe agency.

Vadra's wife Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who took over her new role as AICC general secretary in charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh today, accompanied him in a white Toyota Land Cruiser and dropped him outside the ED's office in Jamnagar House. 

Her first comments after she took charge were: “I stand by my family”.

Vadra left the office at about 9.40 pm alone in the same car in which Priyanka had dropped him. His lawyer said Vadra has replied to every question that was put to him.

"All charges against him are wrong. We will cooperate with the agency 100 per cent," Suman Jyoti Khaitan, his lawyer told the mediapersons waiting outside the ED office.

Vadra has been called again on Thursday.

Ironically, Priyanka assumed her new role on the same day as the Enforcement Directorate started probing her husband Robert Vadra in a case of possession of alleged illegal assets abroad. 

Priyanka drove her husband to the ED office, dropped him there and drove to the AICC to take official charge and meet workers.

The Gandhi family has maintained that the cases against Vadra were a “political witch hunt”. The BJP on the other hand has maintained that Vadra should file counter defamation suits and defend himself legally rather than cry vendetta if they believed the cases were false.

Priyanka will attend the meeting of AICC general secretaries that her brother Congress president Rahul Gandhi has called on Thursday.

She met Uttar Pradesh leaders on Tuesday for stock taking ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Robert Vadra’s ED questioning was scheduled for Wednesday after the Patiala House Court on Saturday granted him interim bail in the case until February 16.

The court also asked Vadra and his associate Manoj Arora, a worker at Vadra’s firm Skylight Hospitality, to cooperate with the investigation.

The ED wants Vadra’s custody to trace the trail of money and uncover ownership details of at least six London properties he allegedly owns.

One of these properties is located at 12 Bryanston Square and is worth Rs 1.9 million pounds. ED allegation is that absconding defence dealer Sanjay Bhandari whom Cadra favoured in a deal in UPA times, sold this Bryanston Square property to Vadra after spending 65,900 pounds on its renovation. The allegation is Bhandari sold the house at the original cost to Vadra and didn’t include the renovation cost.

Vadra has claimed in his application for interim bail that he was being targeted. — With PTI inputs