Supreme Court bench that included CJI Chandrachud did not issue any interim orders as Kavitha's counsels had sought.
A round table conference was held by K Kavitha on 15 March regarding the Women's Reservation Bill. (RaoKavitha/Twitter)
A day ahead of her second deposition before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the Delhi Excise Policy scam, BRS MLC and Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s daughter K Kavitha sounded an SOS in the Supreme Court on Wednesday, 15 March.
However, the apex court did not issue any interim orders in her favour.
At the end of the almost nine-hour-long questioning on Saturday, 11 March, the ED officials had asked the BRS leader to appear before them on 16 March.
Kavitha’s counsels argued before a division bench of the Supreme Court comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha that the ED’s questioning of the BRS MLC was in violation of the law as, being a woman, she should not have been called to the investigative agency’s office.
In her petition, Kavitha alleged that the ED was adopting highly coercive tactics and third-degree measures during its investigation in connection with the Delhi liquor scam.
“This is evident from the treatment given to another witness E Chandan Reddy, who was brutally manhandled by ED officers. Reddy suffered substantial hearing loss due to manhandling. Reddy has filed a writ petition before Telangana High Court in this regard and the petition is pending,” she said.
She alleged that ED was threatening other witnesses and was taking statements that suited their investigation. The witnesses are being threatened that their family members would be arrested if they did not make the statement as they wanted.
As regards her phone, Kavitha said that she had not produced it on her own volition but was coerced to hand it over to the ED officials. She further reiterated that the summons dated March 7 did not require her to produce her cellular phone.
There is no case against her, she contended, but she has been implicated is on the basis of certain statements of a few persons.
To substantiate her claim, she referred to Arun Ramachandra Pillai, filing a petition in the Rouse Avenue Court seeking to retract his statement to the ED.
The ED had grilled Kavitha for close to nine hours on 11 March. Though she was to have appeared before the ED on 9 March, she had obtained consent from the investigation agency to appear two days later.
In fact, on 10 March, even as Kavitha was preparing for her appearance before the ED, Arun Ramachandra Pillai, who, according to the ED, was her front in the Delhi liquor scam, had filed a petition in the Rouse Avenue Court in Delhi that he wanted to withdraw the statement he had given to the investigative agency.
ED reportedly summoned her based on the confession given by Arun Pillai and another arrested person — Kavitha’s former auditor Gorantla Buchibabu. Arun Pillai, in his confessional statement to the ED, had said that he had acted as Kavitha’s front.
On 10 March, a day ahead of her first appearance before the ED, Kavitha put on an elaborate show of strength by organising a day-long hunger strike at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi to demand the introduction of the Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament where the speakers, besides Kavitha, slammed the BJP for failing to bring in the Bill.
Though not on the same scale, Kavitha organised another programme, this time a round-table in New Delhi to keep the heat on the Women’s Eeservation Bill. This too is being seen in political circles as yet another tactic to increase pressure on the ED against taking any extreme decision like arresting her on 16 March.
Ever since Kavitha received the notice asking her to appear before the ED on 9 March, there has been a groundswell of support for her. The entire BRS monolith stood by her and organised several programmes in an expression of solidarity with her and to castigate the BJP for its “politics of vendetta”.
Her father, Chief Minister KCR, recently said he was adopting a wait-and-watch approach to see to what extent BJP would go in persecuting Kavitha.
“They had reached out to Kavitha. Let us see what lengths they would go,” he said, even as he did not rule out the possibility of her arrest, although that did not happen at the end of her daylong quizzing on 11 March.
Almost the entire party had shifted to New Delhi to lend moral support to Kavitha on the day of her questioning.
Her brother and IT Minister KT Rama Rao and Finance Minister T Harish Rao were among the important leaders who stayed put up in New Delhi till the questioning was over. They escorted her back to Hyderabad the same night.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, 14 March, Kavitha visited the Kondagattu Anjaneya Swamy temple in Jagtial district and offered special prayers.
She made a surprise visit to the temple at about 5.30 am.
The priests and officials quickly pulled themselves together and received her with temple honours. Poojas were offered in her name and her gothram.
Butchibabu Gorantla, alleged to be a former auditor of Kavitha, was questioned and confronted with the statements of another arrested accused by the ED on Wednesday.
His deposition comes a day before the scheduled second summons in the same case for Kavitha before the federal investigative agency. Butchibabu was out on bail after the CBI arrested him in this case
The auditor is also expected to be confronted with the statements made by Hyderabad-based businessman Arun Ramachandran Pillai, arrested by the ED on 6 March. Pillai is also alleged to be linked to Kavitha.
The agency recently informed a local court that Pillai and Butchibabu were staying at a Hyderabad five-star hotel in mid-March, during the period when the GoM report on the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy was being formulated.
“It is crucial to interrogate Pillai in ED custody while confronting him with the hotel records so as to investigate the link between ‘South Group’ (represented by Pillai, Butchibabu and another arrested accused in the case Abhishek Boinpally) and Vijay Nair/GoM (headed by former Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia) at the time of policy formulation,” the ED had said.
(With PTI inputs)
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