Did Sanjay Raut write Saamna column slamming Governor from jail? ED to question Shiv Sena MP

Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna on Sunday published Sanjay Raut’s weekly column Rok Thok, following which ED officials are set to question the incarcerated MP to check whether he wrote the article and passed it out of jail illegally or had no connection with it, reported Times of India. 

The report quoted ED sources saying that Raut cannot wrote columns or articles while in custody, unless he has been granted permission by the court for the same. They said that no such permission has been given to the Sena leader. 

Raut, in his weekly column, has slammed Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari over his remarks that Mumbai will cease to be India’s financial capital if Gujaratis and Rajasthanis were excluded. The column says that Marathi people erupt whenever someone tried to play with Maharashtra's self-respect and history had shown it. 

Hitting out at ED, the column writes: “Sugar factories, textile mills and other industries run by Marathi people have been shut down byED and a web of cases cast around Marathi entrepreneurs. The government should talk about this too.”    

Sanjay Raut, a Rajya Sabha member, was arrested by the ED in this case on August 1 and a local court on Thursday sent him to further custody till August 8.
The ED had earlier told the court that Sanjay Raut and his family received "proceeds of crime" worth over Rs 1 crore generated out of alleged irregularities in the housing redevelopment project.

In April, the ED had provisionally attached assets worth over Rs 11.15 crore of Varsha Raut and two of associates of Sanjay Raut as part of its probe. The attached properties are in the form of land held by Pravin M Raut, Sanjay Raut's aide and a former director of Guru Ashish Construction Private Limited, at Palghar, Saphale (a town in Palghar) and Padgha (in Thane district).

The properties also include a flat in Mumbai suburb Dadar held by Varsha Raut and eight plots at the Kihim beach in Alibaug jointly held by Varsha Raut and Swapna Patkar, the wife of Sujit Patkar, a "close associate" of Sanjay Raut, the ED had said.

Guru Ashish Construction Private Limited was involved in the redevelopment of the chawl, which had 672 tenants living in tenements on 47 acres belonging to the Maharashtra Housing Area Development Authority (MHADA), the ED had said earlier.