Kavitha joins issue with ED, submits her phones
HYDERABAD: In a significant development, BRS MLC K Kavitha who was questioned for over nine hours on Tuesday, refuted allegations that she had destroyed her mobile phones, by submitting all the devices she had used, to the ED. Kavitha arrived at the ED headquarters in Delhi at around 11.30 am and proceeded to hand over her phones to the agency along with a letter addressed to investigating officer.
In her letter, Kavitha, who was questioned for the third time on Tuesday, submitted: “In continuance and furtherance of my repeated appearances before you and rendering all due assistance and cooperation and despite the actions of the agency being ex-facie malafide, 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.” Although she is reported to have submitted 10 phones, the number was not mentioned in the letter. “These phones are submitted without prejudice to my right and contentions and larger contention whether a woman’s phone can be intruded, in the teeth of her right to privacy,” the letter said.
“I may take this opportunity to point out a glaring act of malice on part of the agency when it has chosen to make insinuations against me in the prosecution complaint filed qua some other accused in November 2022 alleging that certain phones stand destroyed. It is baffling to note as to why and under what circumstances the agency made such allegations when I was not even summoned or asked any questions whatsoever,” Kavitha wrote.
“The first time I was called by the agency was in March 2023, therefore I have reasons to believe that accusations made against me in November 2022 were not only malafide, misconceived, but also prejudicial,” the letter said. She alleged that the ED deliberately leaked the matter to the media that the phones were destroyed.
“The deliberate leakage of the false accusation 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 indulging in 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,” the BRS MLC said.
She said that it was unfortunate that a premier agency like the ED was becoming privy and party to these acts and sabotaging and sacrificing its sacrosanct duty of free and fair investigation at the altar of vested political interest. “I therefore, hereby tender all these phones so as to dispel any notion or adverse impression that the agency is trying to create,” Kavitha said. It may be mentioned here that Kavitha was questioned by the ED for more than 10 hours on Monday in connection with an investigation of irregularities and money laundering of kickbacks in the Delhi excise scam.
According to sources, Kavitha was questioned about her association with several accused named in the chargesheets and her role in the South Group, which is alleged to have been the biggest beneficiary of the Delhi Excise scam, in which several liquor traders had benefited and passed on parts the windfall gains to the AAP, as advance.
