‘CBI probe’ another effort at malicious persecution: Vadra
A day after the Rajasthan government recommended a CBI probe into 18 cases of land deals in Bikaner, Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law and businessman Robert Vadra took to the Facebook to lash out at the authorities’ malice against him.
“Another attempt of malicious persecution, exposed,” Vadra said, as he narrates the earlier attempts to nail him but went unsuccessful.
“First, Rajasthan police filed an FIR on 26 August 2014. In 3 years, they filed the charge sheets, summoned documents, as also company officials, yet found not an iota of evidence,” Vadra posted on Facebook on Wednesday in response to the latest news of probe related to his hospitality firm.
“Neither the FIR nor the chargesheets accuse the companies associated with me in any manner whatsoever...Having failed with the police FIR and chargesheets, they unleashed the Enforcement Directorate to harass and hound. Enforcement Directorate has conducted raids, seized documents and harassed in every possible manner. As they fail, they make one more sinister attempt to rope in the CBI. Has the Rajasthan government lost faith in its own police and investigation?!” Vadra said.
This is not the first time Vadra hit back at the establishment, without making any direct reference to the Centre or any political party.
“Please hound, persecute and harass as much as you want, such lies will never undermine the truth” Robert Vadra
His latest reaction comes after the new round of probe even after the Rajasthan Police last year cleared Vadra of any wrongdoing, saying he was a bona fide purchaser who was “cheated” and “certainly a victim of fraud”.
“Please hound, persecute and harass as much as you want, such lies will never undermine the truth,” he wrote. The state decided to send the cases to the Central Bureau of Investigation on August 17. “We decided to refer the 18 FIRs, four related to Vadra’s company, to the CBI because these pieces of land were allotted on fake documents and sold multiple times. The central agency will unravel the conspiracy,” Rajasthan home minister Gulab Chand Kataria said.
The cases revolve around 1,400 bighas allotted in lieu of the land acquired for a firing range. A probe found land was allotted to people who had not been displaced.
Around 275 bighas were bought by Skylight Hospitality in 2010 and sold by it in 2012.
The Kandhamal police have ordered a probe into the handcuffing of an undertrial and making him walk for over a kilometre, in a gross violation of the Supreme Court order restricting police from using handcuffs in a routine manner.
Kandhamal SP Mitrabhanu Mahapatra told HT that he has ordered a probe to find out why 30-year-old undertrial Chitrasen Mallik was made to walk handcuffed on Tuesday from Phulbani jail to the bus stand by four constables who then took him to a court in Baliguda block in a bus.
The apex court in its judgment in Prem Shankar Shukla Vs Delhi Administration in 1980 had directed the police not to use handcuffs in a routine manner.
In October last year, Mallik was arrested on charges of trading illicit liquor. He was supposed to be produced before a court in Baliguda block, 80 km from Phulbani jail, where he was lodged. The SP said there was no reason why the undertrail was made to walk in handcuffs when there was a provision of a vehicle.
In May 2013, Bhubaneswar Police had stirred a controversy after they handcuffed Odisha Jana Morcha secretary general Jagneswar Babu, a former member of Biju Janata Dal, while bringing him to a vigilance court. The police had to unlock the cuffs following protests from lawyers present in the court. In April last year, the Odisha Human Rights Commission had slammed the police for handcuffing an undertrial while he was under treatment at Capital Hospital in Bhubaneswar.