Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday morning visited party leader DK Shivakumar at the Tihar Jail in Delhi. She was accompanied by party General Secretary in-charge of Karnataka KC Venugopal and party colleague Ambika Soni.

Earlier, in September former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi went to meet former Finance Minister P Chidambaram as well , who was under custody in Delhi’s Tihar jail.

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Shivakumar was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on September 3 and he is in the agency’s custody. In September last year, the central agency had registered a money laundering case against him, Haumanthaiah (an employee at Karnataka Bhavan in New Delhi) and others.

His bail plea is pending with the  Delhi High Court  and the hearing is going to take place today. A Congress strongman from Karnataka, Shivakumar was instrumental in the formation of the state’s last Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) and Congress coalition government.

Shivakumar has been on the radar of the Income Tax (I-T) Department and the ED since the demonetization in 2016. In an I-T raid at his New Delhi apartment on August 2, 2017, unaccounted Rs 8.83 crore cash was seized.

Shivakumar and his associates were booked under Sections 277 and 278 of the Income Tax Act, 1961, and Sections 120(B) (criminal conspiracy), 193 (punishment for false evidence) and 199 (false statements made in declaration which is by law receivable as evidence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Shivakumar’s affidavit submitted to the Election Commission before the Assembly elections in 2018 showed that his daughter Aishwarya owned assets of Rs 108 crore compared to only Rs 1.09 crore in 2013.

However, the Karnataka Congress leader clarified that his daughter Aishwarya was not dependent on his income and that he was still declaring her assets as per the Representation of Peoples Act.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on October 18 summoned Shivakumar’s wife and mother for questioning in connection with a money laundering case. Earlier, the ED has questioned Shivakumar’s daughter Aishwarya; his brother and MP DK Suresh; and Belagavi Rural MLA Lakshmi Hebbalkar.