Bengaluru: Congress leader D.K. Shivakumar, who flew to New Delhi on Friday in response to summons by the Enforcement Directorate to appear before it in the afternoon, said he would face the “conspiracy of unleashing the ED and the Income Tax (I-T) department against him” legally, politically and socially.
Speaking to reporters before leaving, he said he intended to honour the summons, which he had received late Thursday at 9.40 pm, asking him to appear before the directorate in Delhi at 1 pm Friday. Mr Shivakumar was contacted by the ED after his petition challenging its summons was rejected by the Karnataka High Court.
“Why should I be afraid? I am not scared and will face anything politically, socially and legally. I am not someone who will flee. Have I raped or murdered someone or siphoned off money? This is a political conspiracy against me by my political rivals,” he asserted.
In a tweet, he said although the sudden scheduling by the ED was “malafide” he believed in the rule of the law and would fully cooperate with it.
The former minister rued that over the past two years, all the property of his 84-year-old mother had been attached by various investigating agencies that claimed they were benami.
“My properties too are being called benami. They have sucked our blood,” he lamented.
Mr Shivakumar, 57, made national headlines when he shepherded 44 Congress legislators from Gujarat to a resort to prevent them from being poached by the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of a crucial Rajya Sabha election. Soon afterwards, Income Tax officials came knocking on his door and the properties of his friends, relatives and associates were also raided in August 2017.
