Bengaluru: Arrested Congress leader and former minister D.K. Shivakumar may have secured the dubious distinction of being the first prominent politician from Karnataka to be lodged in Delhi's Tihar jail with a designated court of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday adjourning the hearing on his bail petition to Saturday. Shivakumar was arrested by the ED on September 3 in a money laundering case.
Earlier on Thursday morning, doctors at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital where the Congress strongman was being treated for health issues including high BP, had declared him fit and discharged him from the hospital. Later, as per the court directions, ED officials handed over Shivakumar to Tihar jail officials, who whisked him away.
Sources said that he had been allotted a prison cell next to the one where former Union Minister P Chidambaram who was arrested in the INX Media case, has been lodged.
During the hearing on the bail petition on Thursday, Additional Solicitor General Mr M.K. Nataraj presented a detailed argument on why the bail petition filed by Shivakumar's counsel should be rejected. Asserting that the former minister had committed a ‘white collar crime’, Mr Nataraj said that under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the onus is on the accused to prove his innocence. Just because the accused had paid income tax for the assets he owned, it did not mean he can escape the conditions laid down in the PMLA, he said.
Dismissing the argument of Shivakumar’s counsels that his assets had not increased and only their value had gone up, Nataraj said that there was more than what meets the eye and whatever the ED had assessed, was just the tip of the iceberg.
According to him, since 1991, Shivakumar's mother had purchased 38 properties while there were 27 properties in the Congress strongman's name.
Another 27 properties were in the name of Shivakumar's brother and Bengaluru Rural Congress MP D.K. Suresh and all the properties were purchased using cash, argued Mr Nataraj, adding that some of the transactions were made using loans received from his father Kempe Gowda, who was not an Income Tax 'assesee'.
Claiming that several transactions had happened in two accounts of Shivakumar during demonetisation, Mr Nataraj said that they ran up to a whopping Rs 161 crore. According to him, the ED has traced over 317 accounts where the transactions have to be investigated.
Referring to transactions made by Shivakumar's daughter Ms Aishwarya who was also grilled by ED officials, Mr Nataraj said she had made investments to the tune of over Rs 80 crore. She has also availed loans for which no sureties were given and no interest is being charged, he added.
The ED officials submitted voluminous documents to the court and after Mr Nataraj concluded his arguments, Judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar adjourned the hearing to Saturday morning.
