The Enforcement Directorate (ED) probing the Delhi liquor policy scam case has named K Kavitha, daughter of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, in the case.
Meanwhile, K Kavitha said she will fully cooperate with the Central agency and is not scared of anything.
The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leader alleged that the BJP government at the Centre is resorting to cheap tactics to damage her reputation through media leaks.
In the remand report of businessman Amit Arora who was arrested on Wednesday, the ED has mentioned the names of Kavitha and others who were part of a group called the “South Group”.
The ED had filed its first chargesheet last week and mentioned that Vijay Nair, one of the accused, received Rs 100 crore kickbacks on behalf of AAP leaders from the “South Group”, being controlled by several persons, including KCR’s daughter.
In the coming days, the ED might summon all of them to join the investigation.
The investigation under PMLA is being conducted by the Directorate for tracing out Proceeds of Crime generated due to the alleged irregularities in the formulation and implementation of the Excise policy.
“PMLA investigation revealed that the Delhi Excise Policy, 2021-22 was a device created by the leaders of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) some of who are part of Delhi government to generate illegal funds at the cost of the state government’s exchequer. The policy was formulated with deliberate loopholes, inbuilt mechanism to facilitate illegal activities and is marred with deliberate inconsistencies which when looked at deeply, reflect mala fide intentions of the policymakers.
“This policy though on the face of it had promising and laudable objectives of stopping cartelization and encouraging fair trade practices, in reality it promoted cartel formations through back door, awarded exorbitant wholesale (12 per cent) and huge retail (185 per cent) profit margins and incentivized other illegal activities on account of criminal conspiracy of leaders of AAP,” read the ED’s remand paper.
The ED has further alleged that the 12 per cent profit margin to the wholesalers was devised to extract half of it as a kickback to the AAP leaders.
As per the investigation carried so far, Vijay Nair, on behalf of leaders of AAP, received kickbacks to the tune of at least Rs 100 crore from a group, called South Group being led by various people, including Amit Arora.
The same has been disclosed by the arrestee Amit Arora in his statements.
This is the first time that Kavitha’s name has figured in the investigation.
It was in August that BJP MP Parvesh Varma and former MLA Manjinder Singh Sirsa had made allegations linking her to the scam.
On a defamation case filed by Kavitha, City Civil Court in Hyderabad, in an interim order, had directed the BJP leaders not to make any defamatory statements against Kavitha.
Kavitha had termed the allegations ‘completely baseless’. Stating that the BJP government has all agencies in their hands, she said they can do whatever investigations required and she would completely cooperate. She had claimed that BJP was trying to tarnish the reputation of Chief Minister KCR’s family by making baseless allegations as he had been vocal in criticising policies of the BJP government.