Senior Congress leaders to meet Shivakumar in Tihar

New Delhi, Sep 26 (IANS) In a show of solidarity with jailed former Karnataka Minister and senior Congress leader D.K. Shivakumar, who is currently lodged in Tihar jail, senior party leaders Ahmed Patel, K.C. Venugopal and D.K. Suresh arrived here to meet him on Thursday.

Shivakumar was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on September 3 in connection with its probe into the charges of money laundering after questioning him for four days. The arrest came after the Karnataka High Court rejected his plea for interim protection from the arrest.

Shivakumar has been on the radar of the Income Tax Department and the ED since demonetisation in 2016. An I-T search at his New Delhi flat on August 2, 2017 led to the seizure of Rs 8.59 crore of unaccounted cash. The I-T Department lodged cases against him and his four associates under sections 277 and 278 of the I-T Act, 1961 and sections 120(B), 193 and 199 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Based on the I-T Department chargesheet, the ED registered a money laundering case against Shivakumar, Haumanthaiah, an employee at Karnataka Bhavan in New Delhi, and others.

Last week, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress interim Chief Sonia Gandhi met the former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, who is also lodged in Tihar jail in the INX Media case since September 5. Chidambaram was arrested on August 21 by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The Congress has accused the Bharatiya Janta Party led Central government of indulging in political vendetta over the arrests of two of its senior leaders.