Kavitha submitted her phones to nix the ED claims that she had destroyed the data on 10 of them she used to cover her tracks in the case.
Published Mar 21, 2023 | 11:00 PM ⚊ Updated Mar 22, 2023 | 10:28 AM
K Kavitha after her third day of ED questioning on Tuesday, 21 March, 2023. (Supplied)
BRS MLC and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s daughter Kavitha Kalvakuntla emerged from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) office at Pravartan Bhavan on APJ Abdul Kalam Road in Delhi, at about 9.40 pm, on Tuesday, 21 March — after another gruelling 10-hour questioning by the agency for her alleged role in the Delhi liquor scam.
After coming out of the ED’s office, she straightway got into her car and drove away to her father’s residence on Tughlaq Road in Delhi.
Before leaving, she flashed a tired smile and waved a victory sign at the BRS workers who were waiting anxiously as the questioning seemed to be going on interminably.
According to sources, the ED officials examined the mobile phones that Kavitha submitted to them, saying that they were the ones that she had been using.
She submitted the phones to nix the officials’ claims that she had obliterated the data on 10 mobile phones she used to cover her tracks in the case.
She appeared before the ED twice in the past — the first time on 11 March and the second time on 20 March.
The ED grilled her for the second time for 10 hours in connection with the case.
The Delhi Police tightened security at the ED office and deployed Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel.
Barricades were also placed at the office to restrict the entry of outsiders near the premises. Women police were seen in a bigger number on Tuesday compared to Monday.
In the morning, before deposing before the ED for the third time, she threw a googly at the investigation officers by claiming she had all the phones they alleged she had destroyed.
Before setting out to ED’s office, she held out two transparent polythene bags with several mobile phones seen in them.
After she held them out long enough in her two hands for photojournalists, she got inside her car and drove to the ED’s office at about 11.30 am on Tuesday.
Minutes later, the BRS released a copy of a letter that Kavitha handed over to the ED, in which she tried to call the investigation agency’s bluff.
In her letter, addressed to ED’s Assistant Director Jogender, she said: “…..[D]espite the actions of the agency (ED) being ex-facie, I am today submitting before your good self all the earlier phones that I may have used in the past, and as sought by you, which I could gather.”
She added: “The phones are submitted without prejudice to my right and contentions whether a women’s phone can be intruded, in the teeth of her right to privacy.”
Just a day earlier, the ED team grilled Kavitha for close to 10 hours for her alleged role in the Delhi liquor scam, and it appears the agency asked her to submit her phones to them if her version — that she had not destroyed any phone — was true.
The ED, in the charge sheets filed at the Rouse Avenue District Court in Delhi, while explaining how the scam took place, mentioned Kavitha’s name and said two SIM cards were used on 10 phones during the time the excise policy was being rewritten — and that these were destroyed with the intention to obliterate the evidence of her involvement.
In her letter to the ED on Tuesday, Kavitha took the agency to task.
She said: “I may take the opportunity to point out the glaring act of malice on the part of the agency when it has chosen to make insinuations against me in the prosecution complaint qua some other accused in November 2022, alleging that certain phones stand destroyed. It is baffling to note how, why, and under what circumstances the agency made such an allegation when I was not even summoned or asked any questions whatsoever.”
She said that the first time she was summoned by the agency was earlier this month, which made her believe that the accusations against her in November 2022 were not only mala fide and misconceived but also prejudicial.
She also accused the ED of leaking information to news outlets.
She said: “The deliberate leakage of the false accusations to the public has led to a political slugfest, wherein my political adversaries have been flaunting the accusations, to accuse me of destroying the so-called evidence and causing great harm to my reputation and attempting to defame me, my political party as well as to lower my image in the eyes of the public at large.”
She asked the ED how it could resort to this type of investigation.
She said: “It is unfortunate that a premier agency like the ED is becoming privy and party to these acts and is sabotaging and sacrificing its sacrosanct duty of free and fair investigation at the altar of vested political interest.”
She said that she was surrendering the impugned phones to the ED to dispel any notion and adverse impression that the agency is trying to create.
