The Enforcement Directorate is probing alleged land deals struck by Priyanka Gandhi and her husband Robert Vadra in 2005-2006, sources in the federal agency said on Thursday, the revelation coming a day after the Congress announced that Rahul Gandhi would lead a Bharat Nyay Yatra from Manipur to Mumbai as a follow-up on the Bharat Jodo Yatra, which had received massive popular response.
The Congress accused the Narendra Modi government of “hatching conspiracies” before the Lok Sabha polls to divert people’s attention from their real problems.
The alleged land deals have been mentioned in an ED chargesheet (prosecution complaint) in a case against some others, including NRI businessman C.C. Thampi and alleged middleman Sanjay Bhandari. Neither Priyanka nor Vadra is an accused in the case.
“According to the ED’s complaint, Priyanka Gandhi had bought five acres of agricultural land in Amirpur village in Haryana’s Faridabad district from a Delhi-based real estate agent, H.L. Pahwa, in 2006 and sold it back to him in 2010,” an agency official said.
“Robert Vadra had also allegedly bought three pieces of land measuring 40.08 acres from Pahwa in 2005-2006 and sold them back to him in December 2010.”
The complaint was filed last month and taken cognisance of by a court on December 22. The case will be heard on January 29 next year.
The ED is probing Thampi’s alleged purchase of about 486 acres of land at Amirpur through Pahwa between 2005 and 2008.
“The agency has mentioned in the chargesheet that during the probe it came across the land purchase and sale transactions of the Vadras after it registered a Foreign Exchange Management Act (Fema) case against 67-year-old Thampi in 2015. Thampi is allegedly a close associate of Robert Vadra,” the ED official said.
Thampi was arrested in January 2020 and is out on bail.
The chargesheet says: “Pahwa was receiving cash out of the books for the purpose of acquisition of land and it was also noticed that Robert Vadra did not pay the entire consideration to Pahwa.”
Bhandari fled to the UK in 2016, agency sources said. Both the CBI and the ED are probing charges of money-laundering and tax evasion against him.
