ED files chargesheet against Sonia Gandhi, Rahul in National Herald case

The Enforcement Directorate has filed a chargesheet against Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and others on charges of money- laundering in the National Herald case.

Special judge Vishal Gogne examined the chargesheet, which was filed on April 9, on the point of cognisance and posted the matter for April 25.

The chargesheet also names Congress leader Sam Pitroda and Suman Dubey as accused.

"The present prosecution complaint shall next be taken up for consideration on the aspect of cognisance before this court on April 25, when the special counsel for the ED and IO shall also ensure the production of the case diaries for perusal by the court," the judge said.

The chargesheet was filed under Sections 3 (money-laundering) and 4 (punishment for money-laundering) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act by ED's special public prosecutor NK Matta.

"Let the complaint be checked and registered. The Ahlmad (court staff) shall ensure that the entire file/documents are properly paginated. The ED is directed to file a soft copy of the complaint and documents in readable/OCR format by the next date," the judge said.

The special judge dealing with the cases of lawmakers also noted the submission of the ED, which said it would be moving an application before the district judge for the transfer of the case related to the predicate offence, being probed by the CBI for alleged cheating, criminal conspiracy and other offences, based on which the ED had started its investigation in the present matter, from another court to Judge Gogne's court.

The predicate offence is required to be tried by the same court which takes cognisance of the offence under Section 3 of the PMLA, the judge said, and Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are members of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha respectively.

"Essentially, the two offences viz the predicate offence and the PMLA offence are required to be tried by the same court," the judge said.

Since the allegations in the present complaint were arising from the predicate offence, the file in the predicate offence were required to be called for perusal, the court added.

"However, the power of assignment or transfer of a matter is not vested with this court and is rather the prerogative of the Principal District & Sessions Judge, Rouse Avenue Courts Complex, New Delhi," the court pointed out.

The ED investigation began in 2021 after a metropolitan magistrate in Patiala House courts in Delhi took cognisance of a private complaint filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on June 26, 2014.