Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut's wife again skips ED questioning in PMC bank money laundering case
Mumbai: Varsha Raut, wife of Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut, on Tuesday skipped questioning by the Enforcement Directorate in the over Rs 4,300-crore PMC Bank money laundering case, official sources said.
They said she has asked for an adjournment of the latest summons and has sought a fresh date of January 5 for deposing before the central probe agency in Mumbai.
It was not immediately clear if the ED has agreed to the request.
The ED wants to question Varsha Raut with regard to a transaction of about Rs 55 lakh with the wife of a person who is accused in the PMC Bank alleged fraud case.
ED sources had said that it was the third summons issued to her after she skipped two earlier ones on health grounds, they said.
The summonses for questioning were issued to her under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Sanjay Raut, while holding a press conference in Mumbai on Monday, had denied any wrongdoing on the part of his wife and said they have been in correspondence with the probe agency in connection with the case for about one-and-a-half months.
Raut is a Rajya Sabha MP and also a spokesperson of the Shiv Sena, which is in power in Maharashtra and is a former ally of the BJP. He said details regarding this loan transaction had already been submitted to the ED during the correspondence.
"We are middle-class people. My wife had taken a loan from a friend 10 years ago to purchase a house. Details have been given to the Income-tax (department) and also mentioned in my Raya Sabha affidavit. The ED woke up to this deal after ten years," he told the conference.
Sanjay Raut had alleged that central agencies were being used to "destabilise" the Uddhav Thackeray-led government in Maharashtra.
The ED had filed a PMLA case to probe the alleged loan fraud in the Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank in October last year against Housing Development Infrastructure Ltd (HDIL), its promoters Rakesh Kumar Wadhawan, his son Sarang Wadhawan, its former chairman Waryam Singh and ex-managing director Joy Thomas.
It took cognisance of a Mumbai Police economic offences wing FIR against them that charged them for causing "wrongful loss, prima facie to the tune of Rs 4,355 crore to PMC Bank, and corresponding gains to themselves".
The Shiv Sena, which is ruling Maharashtra as part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government along with the NCP and Congress, had earlier alleged that the central probe agencies have been targeting them unfairly.
Former BJP leader Eknath Khadse who has recently joined Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), has also been summoned by the ED for questioning on Wednesday in Mumbai in connection with a money laundering case linked to a land deal in Pune's Bhosri area.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
