A day after his fifth round of questioning by the ED in a money laundering case, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said that such agencies don’t affect him and that officers who interrogated him understood that a leader of his party can’t be “scared and suppressed.”
“ED and such agencies don’t affect me, even the officers who interrogated me understood that a leader of the Congress party can’t be scared and suppressed,” the former Congress chief said.
The Congress leader also thanked party workers for their support during the ED questioning, and said he was not alone during the questioning but all those fighting for democracy were with him.
The Congress MP from Wayanad (Kerala) was questioned by the ED for 50 hours over five days in a money laundering case related to the National Herald newspaper.The Congress leader was interrogated for three consecutive days starting June 13. He later appeared before the ED on Monday and Tuesday. He has not been issued fresh summons and it is understood that his questioning has ended, at least for now.
Gandhi spent a total of about 54 hours at the ED office over five sittings with the investigators questioning him over multiple sessions and recording his statement under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Rahul slams BJP over Agnipath
Hitting out at the BJP-led Centre, Gandhi alleged that the Centre was “weakening” the army through the new short-term military recruitment scheme ‘Agnipath’, and said Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have to withdraw the military recruitment initiative just like the farm laws were rolled back.
The biggest issue in the country is of jobs and the government has broken the “spine of the country” by harming small and medium businesses, Gandhi said.
He alleged Prime Minister Narendra Modi has “handed the country to two-three industrialists” and now the last resort of jobs in the army has also been “closed”.
“I had said about farm laws that Modiji will have to take them back and he did. Now, the Congress is saying Prime Minister Modi will have to withdraw the Agnipath scheme and all the youth are standing with us on this,” he said.
“They used to talk of ‘one rank, one pension’, now they have come up with ‘no rank, no pension’,” Gandhi said.
He alleged the Chinese army is “sitting on our land” and asserted that the army should be strengthened. “When there is a war results of this will be evident…they are weakening the army, it will harm the country and they call themselves nationalists,” Gandhi said.
He was addressing Congress parliamentarians and MLAs from across the country who converged at the party headquarters in Delhi to express solidarity with him after he was questioned by the ED.
