Indore: Senior lawyer and Congress’s Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal strongly objected to the raids by Income-Tax sleuths on Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath’s OSD Praveen Kakkar’s residence in Indore High Court on Thursday.
Kakkar, whose residence in Indore and other establishments were raided by the I-T sleuths had moved the Indore bench of MP high court calling the raids ‘improper’.
Arguing in favour of his client for over an hour on Thursday, Sibal told the HC that raids were carried out without having sufficient evidences and the state police wasn’t intimated about the action in prior.
Sibal also alleged breach of privacy during the action. The hearing before a bench of Justices Prakash Shrivastava and Vivek Rusia lasted for nearly four hours.
Referring to the presence of a specially-abled child in the residence of Kakkar during the raids, Sibal claimed that the kid got terrified with the late night action. He also questioned how BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya claimed about the total seizure amount before I-T officials preparing the panchnama.
Vijayvargiya had tweeted that seizures in IT action were worth Rs 281 crore on Tuesday morning while the official confirmation from the CBDT had come by evening, announcing the same figure. Advocate Sanjay Jain representing the I-T department claimed that IT sleuths are empowered to take such action anywhere in the country under section 132 of the I-T Act.
The allegations of the raids being politically motivated are wrong, argued Jain while adding the official statement of the department also did not name anyone. The HC posted the matter for hearing on April 15. Kakkar had moved the HC a couple of days ago to object I-T’s action of ‘barging into his home by breaking the door and not offering their introduction’ at 3am on Sunday.
After the I-T raids were over, Kakkar had claimed that nothing illegal was found from him or his family.
Meanwhile NGO owner Ashwin Sharma whose office and residence in Bhopal also were raided by the I-T department on Thursday, appeared before the media and said that he would offer sources of all wealth found from his possession.
Talking to News18, he said that his business had flourished in last 15 years. Asked whether he belongs to the BJP or Congress, he said none but added that he is linked to the BJP ideology.
Declining his links with hawala, Sharma said that he can furnish all his sources of income to the IT dept.
Heated exchanges are on between the BJP and Congress ever since the raids were conducted early this week. The BJP is calling it a routine I-T exercise while the Congress has dubbed the action as politically motivated ahead of LS polls.
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