A day after being grilled by officials of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in an alleged money laundering case involving the Sandesara group, Congress leader Ahmed Patel on Friday said the investigation agency had failed to answer his question on who in the Gujarat government had bestowed benefits and privileges to the Sandesara group.
“Thank you officials of ED for coming to my house thrice. I answered each of their 128 questions but they failed to answer my one fundamental question — Who in the Gujarat state government was responsible for bestowing multiple benefits, privileges and honours on the Sandesara group,” Mr. Patel wrote on Twitter.
On Thursday, ED officials questioned Mr. Patel for the third time at his residence for about 10 hours in connection with a probe into the Sandesara brothers’ money-laundering case.
The Sandesara group is the promoter of the Vadodara-based Sterling Biotech Limited, a pharmaceutical company that has been accused of multi-crore bank fraud and money laundering.
Mr. Patel was permitted to have his questioning at his residence in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, over which senior citizens are being discouraged to go out.
Priyanka tweets
Coming out in support of Mr. Patel, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said sending the ED officials to harass the senior party leader showed the “perversion” of the government’s priorities.
“Thousands are dying, our health workers are desperate for supportive measures, the economy is facing an unprecedented crisis, the Chinese are entering our territory, our soldiers are being killed, and this is what the Government is busy spending time on. They say crisis unveils the true nature of people, it appears the saying applies to governments as well,” Ms. Vadra tweeted.