India
The new development comes a few days after a special Enforcement Directorate (ED) court issued a warrant to produce Sasikala before it in a Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) violation case.
Chennai: IT Department questions the former general secretary of AIADMK VK Sasikala in connection with the disproportionate assets (DA) case. Sasikala is currently lodged in Bengaluru's Parappana Agrahara jail.
A team headed by Veera Raghava Rao has questioned Sasikala.
The new development comes a few days after a special Enforcement Directorate (ED) court issued a warrant to produce Sasikala before it in a Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) violation case. Sasikala was a close aide of former chief minister J Jayalalitha.
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The case is linked to the searches carried out in November last year during which IT sleuths seized various documents from Poes Garden, which was the residence of late Jayalalithaa.
ED had earlier booked Sasikala and her relative V Bhaskaran for allegedly purchasing equipment for a TV channel in 1996 from a foreign country where they apparently routed payments via illegal means.
She was supposed to appear before the court on November 30. However, the prison authorities reportedly failed to produce her due to her health reasons.
Earlier, there was a controversy regarding the special privileges of Sasikala in Bengaluru jail.
The truth came to the limelight earlier in July 2017 when former DIG Prisons, Bengaluru D Roopa Moudgil submitted a report to the home secretary and four other departments. Roopa Moudgil accusing former DIG and IGP of Prisons HN Satyanarayana Rao of collecting Rs 2 crore as bribe to continue the special prerogatives to Sasikala.
Roopa Moudgil's report allegedly said, as an award for influencing the prison administrations from Satyanarayana Rao to jail warden, Sasikala got special menu daily, cooked by special chefs in a special kitchen near the women's cell.
Days after the submission of the report, Roopa was transferred to another department in Karnataka Police.
DGP Rao, however, denied the allegations saying he had never accepted anything from any prisoners. He earlier said to media that he had never provided any special treatment to Sasikala. He also told she is like any other woman prisoner and is lodged in the first floor of the women's’ barrack, and that all the allegations are baseless and there is no evidence for them.
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