Bengaluru: Former Karnataka minister and senior Congress leader DK Shivakumar’s 23-year-old daughter was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate on Thursday in connection with a money-laundering case.
Aisshwarya, who lives in Bengaluru, was summoned to Delhi by the probe agency on Tuesday. Shivakumar, too, was brought to the Enforcement Directorate headquarters on Thursday for questioning.
The 57-year-old leader, the chief troubleshooter of the Karnataka Congress and a powerful politician in the state, was summoned to Delhi for questioning by the agency last month, after the Karnataka High Court decided against the cancelling of the case and denied him protection from arrest in a money laundering case.
He was arrested after four days of interrogation; the probe agency told the court that he was “uncooperative and evasive”.
The Enforcement Directorate officials are probing how Aisshwarya’s net worth grew from around Rs. 1 crore in 2013 to over Rs. 100 crore in 2018 and whether the financial transactions recorded between the father and the daughter also involved the allegedly laundered money. Aisshwarya and her father visited Singapore in July 2017 and had made some investments there, that are also being probed.
DK Shivakumar is in the custody of of the probe agency till Friday.
The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against him and a few others in September last year for alleged tax evasion and illegal transactions worth crores.
Members of the Vokkaliga community, the dominant community in Karnataka to which Shivakumar belongs, held a massive march in Bengaluru to protest the arrest of Congress leader.
“I wholeheartedly thank leaders, supporters, well-wishers and friends who have organised a massive protest in my support tomorrow in Bengaluru. I humbly request that the protest be peaceful and doesn’t cause any inconvenience to citizens. Please ensure public property isn’t harmed,” a tweet from his account said on Tuesday.
Shivakumar made national headlines in 2017 when he agreed to accommodate 44 party legislators from Gujarat at a resort to prevent them from being poached by the BJP ahead of a crucial Rajya Sabha election. Soon after, Income Tax officials came knocking on Shivakumar’s door.Several properties linked to the Congress leader were also raided in August 2017.
