B S Yediyurappa has said he is not happy with the arrest of D K Shivakumar.Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa Wednesday said he is not happy with the arrest of senior Congress leader D K Shivakumar and will “pray to God that he comes out of all this”. Yediyurappa’s reaction comes a day after Shivakumar was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money laundering case.
“It’s not that I’m happy with his arrest. I pray to God that D K Shivakumar should come out of all this,” the Karnataka CM said. “In my life, neither have I hated anyone nor wished for something bad to happen to someone. Law will take its own course in such cases,” he added. Read this story in Malayalam
The Congress has accused the BJP of indulging in vendetta politics by first targeting former Union minister P Chidambaram and now Shivakumar through central agencies. The Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee has called for a state-wide bandh on Wednesday, which is in effect at Kanakapura and Ramanagara areas. Follow Karnataka Bandh LIVE Updates here
Shivakumar was arrested in a case registered by the ED under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in September last year. The ED case was based on a chargesheet (prosecution complaint) filed by the Income Tax Department in a court in 2017 for alleged tax evasion and hawala transactions worth crores.
The IT Department’s investigation had found Rs 8.83 crore in unaccounted cash in New Delhi in locations linked to the Congress leader. At the time, Shivakumar was sheltering 44 Congress MLAs from Gujarat at a resort outside Bengaluru ahead of a crucial poll in Gujarat for Rajya Sabha seats where Congress leader Ahmed Patel’s fortunes were dependent on the 44 MLAs sheltered by Shivakumar.
