Searches at DMK heavyweight's house raise political eyebrows in Delhi.
The CBI raid on DMK leader MK Stalin in Chennai on Thursday morning created a political uproar. The raids, conducted within 24 hours of the Dravidian party withdrawing support to the UPA government, was seen as political vendetta.
Immediately, the embarrassed government and Congress disowned the raid with prime minister Manmohan Singh dubbing it as “most unfortunate”.He said, “We will find out who was behind it.”
The drama started unfolding around 6 am on Thursday when a four member team of the CBI landed at the Chennai residence of Stalin, son of DMK supremo M Karunanidhi.
According to the investigation agency, the case against DMK leader involved avoidance of import duties while buying luxury vehicles.
Though the government has expressed displeasure at the timing of raids, the CBI is claiming that it is as a mere “co-incidence”, emphasizing that timing had nothing to do with the political developments.
The raid, which was carried out apparently without any kind of political clearance, ended after minister of state in PMO V Narayanasamy — the CBI is under the administrative control of his ministry — was snubbed by Sonia.
Parliamentary affairs minister Kamal Nath, who was also summoned by Sonia to go into the damage control mode, said: “However much we condemn, it would be less.”
A CBI officer here claimed they had visited Stalin’s house to locate a car, procured in violation of import rules. “CBI wishes to clarify that the above operation was strictly in accordance with procedures and there was no intention whatsoever to target any particular individual,”the agency said.
The CBI carried out searches at 18 locations and seized 17 imported cars. “On Wednesday, a case has been registered against an importer identified as Alex C Joseph and Murugunandan, a senior intelligence officer of DRI, who allegedly did not take any action even after identification of vehicles at the premises of certain users and unknown others.
Case was registered on a complaint that about 33 vehicles had been imported in Tamil Nadu and of these, certain vehicles are believed to have been imported and subsequently sold in violation of import provisions causing loss of up to Rs48 crore approx to the exchequer,”the CBI’s official statement claims.
According to a CBI official, the team had gone at Stalin’s residence to inspect his son Udayanidhi’s Hummer car and obtain the documents from him. But Udayanidhi, a film producer, told the CBI officials that the car was in a work shop and that he would hand over the documents to them.
Investigators claims that Alex C. Joseph has smuggled number of luxury vehicles by evading tax. The CBI alleges that Udayanidhi had purchased one of the cars from Alex and had also been questioned earlier in this connection. The DRI has already registered a case against Alex and transferred it to the CBI.
Only on Wednesday, all five DMK ministers submitted their resignations to the PM, who accepted and sent them over to President Pranab Mukherjee.
@DNA
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