ED summons to malign image, says Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 24

With the Enforcement Directorate, probing a suspected money laundering case against Bholath MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira, summoning three top fashion designers — Ritu Kumar, Sabyasachi Mukherjee and Manish Malhotra — for questioning in Delhi later this week, the MLA today reacted sharply to the development.

While ED officials maintained the designers had been summoned only as witnesses in the case, Khaira said the selective information released by ED about payments made to fashion designers five to six years ago on the occasion of his daughter’s wedding was nothing but an attempt “to malign my public image and aimed at character assassination”.

Khaira said: “It is a normal practice of every family, particularly among Punjabis, to give their best to children, particularly daughters, at the time of their wedding. My family had purchased three wedding dresses in 2015-16 for my daughter and family.”

He said the dresses had cost Rs 7-8 lakh in all. The money paid to the fashion designers came from agriculture limit/overdraft account in a bank at Jalandhar. Khaira said he was saddened to note that the same old charges of fake passports and the NDPS case related to Fazilka were being repeated against him. Khaira reiterated he was never named in the FIR. “Neither had my name appeared in the challan report nor any recovery made in the Fazilka NDPS case,” he claimed, adding it was slapped against under political vendetta.