A special Enforcement Directorate court in Delhi court on Tuesday extended the judicial custody of former Karnataka Congress minister DK Shivakumar extended the judicial custody till October 25 in connection with an alleged money laundering case. Subsequently in the day, the Delhi High Court also adjourned his bail plea till October 17.
Shivakumar, who is a former Water Resources and Power Minister in the state, was produced before a special judge at the Rouse Avenue Court on Tuesday as his judicial custody ended on Tuesday.
This means the senior Congress leader in Karnataka will remain in Tihar jail, where he has been lodged since September 3 after he was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate. While his police (ED) custody ended on September 19, he has been remanded to judicial custody since then.
Tuesday’s development comes as the ED has now summoned Shivakumar's wife and mother for questioning in connection with the same money laundering case. Earlier his daughter Aisshwarya, brother DK Suresh, Rural Bengaluru MP has been questioned too.
ED officials claimed that summoning Shivakumar's mother and wife was necessitated after the agency got some evidence about financial transactions while questioning several other persons in the last one month.
The ED had been probing accusations of money laundering registered against DK Shivakumar (DKS) since August 2017, when a cash amount of Rs 8.86 crore was found in his New Delhi residence.
Allegations against Shivakumar include that he along with his associates transferred unaccounted money through hawala transactions to the Congress top brass.
On September 12, DK Shivakumar’s daughter Aishwarya too had appeared before the ED and was questioned for seven hours in connection with the case. At the time, officials from the ED stated that she was being questioned about a trust fund set up in her name.
The ED also interrogated her regarding the increase in her wealth between 2013 and 2018. Shivakumar had declared that his daughter held assets worth Rs 108 crore, ahead of the 2018 state assembly elections. However, in 2013, she supposedly had only Rs 1.09 crore.
The ED has also questioned many of Shivakumar’s aides including Karnataka Congress MLA Laxmi Hebbalkar in this case. As part of the probe into the case back in 2017, the Income Tax Department found that some transactions made by him were linked to Lakshmi Hebbalkar. Further, when the raids first took place on August 2, 2017, Shivakumar had allegedly made a phone call to Lakshmi.
(IANS inputs)