Excise Policy probe: CBI ready with detailed questionnaire for Manish Sisodia

By PTI

NEW DELHI: The CBI has ready an exhaustive set of questions for Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia who’s more likely to seem for questioning earlier than investigators in reference to the Excise coverage case probe on Sunday amid apprehensions of his arrest.

Sisodia, who additionally holds the Finance portfolio within the Delhi Cabinet, was initially summoned final Sunday however he sought deferment of his questioning citing the continued Budget train, following which, the CBI had requested him to seem on February 26.

Sisodia has expressed apprehensions that companies would possibly arrest him.

“They are using the CBI to take revenge and I am sure they will do that by getting me arrested,” he charged.

The Aam Admi Party chief was earlier examined for a day on October 17 final 12 months, practically a month earlier than the central probe company had filed its cost sheet in opposition to seven folks, together with middlemen and liquor merchants, during which Sisodia was not listed as accused, however the company had saved the probe into his alleged function open.

Nearly three months after submitting its cost sheet, the CBI will query Sisodia on numerous points of the Excise coverage, his alleged hyperlinks with liquor merchants, and politicians and claims made by witnesses of their statements.

Armed with confessional statements of Sisodia’s “close associate” Dinesh Arora, and knowledge gleaned from questioning of alleged members of ‘South Lobby’, a coterie of politicians and liquor businessmen who allegedly swung the coverage of their favour, the CBI has ready an elaborate questionnaire for him, the officers mentioned.

It is alleged the Delhi authorities’s coverage to grant licences to liquor merchants favoured sure sellers who had allegedly paid bribes for it, a cost strongly refuted by the AAP.

“It was additional alleged that irregularities have been dedicated together with modifications in Excise Policy, extending undue favours to the licensees, waiver/discount in licence payment, the extension of L-1 license with out approval and so on.

“It was also alleged that illegal gains on the count of these acts were diverted to concerned public servants by private parties by making false entries in their books of accounts,” a CBI spokesperson had mentioned.

Recently, the CBI arrested Butchibabu Gorantla, a former Chartered Accountant of Okay Kavitha, a BRS MLC in Telangana and a daughter of Chief Minister Okay Chandrasekhar Rao.

It is alleged that Babu had met a number of accused named within the FIR in Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai and was one of many prime negotiators from the South Lobby, which wished to swing the now-scrapped excise coverage for 2021-22 in its favour.

The CBI had additionally questioned Kavitha in reference to the case in December final 12 months.

During its probe, the CBI had discovered proof that Babu acted on behalf of the South Lobby comprising the Telangana MLC, Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party MP Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy, and Aurobindo Pharma’s P Sarat Chandra Reddy.

NEW DELHI: The CBI has ready an exhaustive set of questions for Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia who’s more likely to seem for questioning earlier than investigators in reference to the Excise coverage case probe on Sunday amid apprehensions of his arrest.

Sisodia, who additionally holds the Finance portfolio within the Delhi Cabinet, was initially summoned final Sunday however he sought deferment of his questioning citing the continued Budget train, following which, the CBI had requested him to seem on February 26.

Sisodia has expressed apprehensions that companies would possibly arrest him.

“They are using the CBI to take revenge and I am sure they will do that by getting me arrested,” he charged.

The Aam Admi Party chief was earlier examined for a day on October 17 final 12 months, practically a month earlier than the central probe company had filed its cost sheet in opposition to seven folks, together with middlemen and liquor merchants, during which Sisodia was not listed as accused, however the company had saved the probe into his alleged function open.

Nearly three months after submitting its cost sheet, the CBI will query Sisodia on numerous points of the Excise coverage, his alleged hyperlinks with liquor merchants, and politicians and claims made by witnesses of their statements.

Armed with confessional statements of Sisodia’s “close associate” Dinesh Arora, and knowledge gleaned from questioning of alleged members of ‘South Lobby’, a coterie of politicians and liquor businessmen who allegedly swung the coverage of their favour, the CBI has ready an elaborate questionnaire for him, the officers mentioned.

It is alleged the Delhi authorities’s coverage to grant licences to liquor merchants favoured sure sellers who had allegedly paid bribes for it, a cost strongly refuted by the AAP.

“It was additional alleged that irregularities have been dedicated together with modifications in Excise Policy, extending undue favours to the licensees, waiver/discount in licence payment, the extension of L-1 license with out approval and so on.

“It was also alleged that illegal gains on the count of these acts were diverted to concerned public servants by private parties by making false entries in their books of accounts,” a CBI spokesperson had mentioned.

Recently, the CBI arrested Butchibabu Gorantla, a former Chartered Accountant of Okay Kavitha, a BRS MLC in Telangana and a daughter of Chief Minister Okay Chandrasekhar Rao.

It is alleged that Babu had met a number of accused named within the FIR in Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai and was one of many prime negotiators from the South Lobby, which wished to swing the now-scrapped excise coverage for 2021-22 in its favour.

The CBI had additionally questioned Kavitha in reference to the case in December final 12 months.

During its probe, the CBI had discovered proof that Babu acted on behalf of the South Lobby comprising the Telangana MLC, Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party MP Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy, and Aurobindo Pharma’s P Sarat Chandra Reddy.