Haryana land deal case: ED records Robert Vadra’s statement on 3rd day of questioning

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) recorded the statement of Robert Vadra, the businessman husband of Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, for about six hours on the third consecutive day on Thursday in a 2008 Haryana land deal-linked money laundering case.

By the end of Thursday’s session, he was questioned for about 16 hours in total. Vadra (56) has termed the ED action “political witch-hunt” against him and his family.

He reached the ED office in central Delhi shortly after 11 am on Thursday, accompanied by his wife, an MP from Kerala’s Wayanad. Robert Vadra left the agency office around 6.15 pm.

ED sources said he has not been given a fresh date for appearance as of now. It was also not clear if he would be called again for a fresh round of grilling.

They said Vadra was asked about 16-17 questions in total, and his statement was recorded under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

He told reporters in the morning that he has got a “clean chit” in this case from the Haryana government and “Khattar ji (former Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar) in 2019 and 2020”.

“Why are they (ED) calling me after these many years... this is a political witch-hunt, and that is why people think that it is a misuse of agencies.”

Over the past two days, Vadra has claimed that the ED action was borne out of “political vendetta” against him and his family, and said that while he has always cooperated with the agency and furnished thousands of pages of documents, he needed a “closure” in these cases which are almost 20 years old.

Sources said that the ED would soon file a chargesheet against Vadra in this case, apart from two other money laundering investigations conducted him. Some attachment of assets can also be done in these cases.

The latest probe against Vadra is linked to a land deal in Haryana’s Manesar-Shikohpur (now Sector 83) in Gurugram.

The deal of February 2008 was done by a company named Skylight Hospitality Pvt Ltd, where Vadra was a director earlier, as it purchased 3.5 acres land in Shikohpur from Onkareshwar Properties at a price of Rs 7.5 crore.

The state had the Congress government led by Bhupinder Singh Hooda at that time. Four years later, in September 2012, the company sold the land to realty major DLF for Rs 58 crore.

The land deal got embroiled in controversy in October 2012 after IAS officer Ashok Khemka, then posted as the director general of Land Consolidation and Land Records-cum-Inspector-General of Registration of Haryana, cancelled the mutation of this categorising the transaction as violative of state consolidation Act and some related procedures.

BJP, which was in opposition then, had termed the case an instance of “corruption” in land deals and that of “nepotism”, hinting at Vadra’s kinship with the first family of the Congress party.

The Haryana Police filed an FIR to probe this deal in 2018.

Vadra had earlier been questioned multiple times by the federal probe agency in two other money laundering cases.