The CBI on Friday raided the Rohtak home of Congress leader and former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and registered a new corruption case against him, triggering allegations of “political vendetta” by the Narendra Modi government ahead of the general election.

Agency sources told The Telegraph the probe would cover the controversial land deal between Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra and real estate firm DLF, which was one of Modi’s 2014 election planks.

They said the raid related to charges that during Hooda’s tenure as chief minister, private builders had in collusion with public servants bought land cheap from farmers in Gurgaon.

The Congress questioned the timing of the raid, which came on the last day of campaigning before the Jind Assembly by-election in Haryana.

It highlighted that the Supreme Court had ordered the CBI to investigate the land deals more than a year ago and asked why it took the agency so long to register the FIR.

The early morning raid came a little before Hooda was to travel to Jind to address an election rally in favour of Congress candidate Randeep Singh Surjewala.

Besides Hooda, the FIR names then additional chief secretary Trilok Chand Gupta, the then chief administrator of the Haryana Urban Development Authority, and 15 builders including DLF, Emaar MGF, Buzz Hotels and Ansals.

More than 20 premises were raided in Delhi and Gurgaon. The accused have been booked on the charges of criminal conspiracy and cheating and under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The timings of some other recent raids by the CBI too had raised allegations of a political motive. The agency had registered an FIR against 11 people — including four Samajwadi Party and three Bahujan Samaj Party politicians — in an old mining case on January 5 just as the two parties were firming up their alliance against the BJP.

Hints had been dropped that Samajwadi president and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, who had the previous day met Mayawati in Delhi, might be questioned in connection with the case.

On Friday, CBI spokesperson Nitin Wakankar declined comment when asked why the agency had waited so long although the apex court had ordered it to probe the land deals on November 1, 2017. “I cannot comment on this,” he told this paper.

The agency had registered a “preliminary inquiry” into the case on January 1, 2018.

Hooda, 71, who headed a Congress government in Haryana from 2004 to 2014, and his son and MP Deepinder Singh Hooda were at home during the raid.

“It’s nothing but political vendetta by the BJP government and was timed to prevent me from going to Jind,” Hooda Sr later told reporters.

“The BJP government cannot suppress my voice: I’m from a family of freedom fighters. I have faith in the legal system of the country.”

News agency PTI quoted Hooda as saying he had “fully cooperated” with the officials and that “they found nothing”.

“They took a copy of an income-tax return filed by my nephew a long time ago. Nothing was found against me,” the PTI report quoted Hooda as saying.

This is the fourth FIR registered against the former chief minister since the BJP came to power in Haryana and at the Centre in 2014.

On November 1, 2017, the Supreme Court had asked the CBI to probe the alleged irregularities in the acquisition of 1,417.07 acres of land between 2009 and 2012.

Agency sources alleged that private builders had entered into a criminal conspiracy with Hooda and Gupta to cheat the land-sellers.

They said the government had issued notifications for acquisition of the land, triggering panic sale of plots to private developers at rates lower than the market prices.

Of the three earlier FIRs, the CBI had filed two and the Haryana police, one.

In December last year, the CBI filed a chargesheet against Hooda and Congress politician Motilal Vora in connection with the re-allotment of a plot in Panchkula, Haryana, to Associated Journals Limited, which is allegedly controlled by Congress leaders. The re-allotment caused a loss of Rs 67 lakh to the exchequer, the agency said.

According to the CBI, the plot was originally allotted to the company in 1982 but no construction took place there till 1992, prompting the Haryana Urban Development Authority to take back possession.

The chargesheet says the same plot was re-allotted to the company at the original rates in 2005 in violation of norms.

The agency has named Hooda as the “conspirator” in the Manesar land scandal, which it alleges caused a loss of nearly Rs 1,500 crore. In September 2015, Haryana police registered an FIR against Hooda and Vadra in connection with the Vadra-DLF land deal of 2008.