Narendra Modi has been accused of engaging in the “politics of vendetta and intimidation” after India’s financial crime agency named leading opposition figures in a money laundering case.
The Enforcement Directorate named Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi, both senior figures in the main opposition Congress party, in a charge sheet filed before a Delhi court on 9 April.
The court examined the charge sheet on Tuesday and ordered the matter be scheduled for a further hearing on 25 April.
The agency has accused the Gandhis of forming a shell company to illegally take control of property worth about £226m from a company that published the newspaper National Herald. They have previously denied any wrongdoing.
The agency also questioned Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra in a separate case related to alleged irregularities in land deals dating back to 2008, when a coalition led by the Congress party ruled India.
“There’s nothing in the case,” Mr Vadra told reporters before visiting the agency’s office. “Whenever I speak for minorities or think about joining politics, they misuse the authorities.”
As part of its investigation into the money laundering case against National Herald publisher Associated Journals Limited and its owner, an entity called Young Indian, the agency last week sent notices to seize assets worth nearly £58m.
The Gandhis are major shareholders of Young Indian.
The federal agency had questioned the Gandhis in connection with the case back in 2022 and then, in November 2023, seized assets linked to the investigation worth around £66m, including properties in Delhi and Mumbai and equity investments.
National Herald was founded in 1937 by Jawaharlal Nehru, a leading figure in India’s independence movement who would become the nation’s first prime minister. Rahul Gandhi is Nehru’s great-grandson.
The money laundering case against the Gandhis is rooted in a trial court order that allowed the Income Tax department to investigate National Herald and conduct a tax assessment of both mother and son.
The Congress party lashed out at the Modi government after the agency filed the charge sheet against the Gandhis.
“Filing charge sheets against Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and some others is nothing but the politics of vendetta and intimidation by the prime minister,” party spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said in a post on X.
The party and its leadership would not be silenced by such intimidation, Mr Ramesh added.
Senior party member Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury accused the prime minister and his BJP party of hatching a “conspiracy” to “destroy the Congress”.
“You can make them do anything and we don’t care about that,” he said, referring to federal agencies. “We are not afraid of the BJP and PM Modi. We will fight this.”
Fellow senior party member Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the government was “only exposing itself” and declared that the accusations would be “contested fully in all aspects”.
KC Venugopal, another senior Congress member, said the move “reeks of desperation from prime minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah, who are failing to address the concerns of the people and are looking to continuously create distraction after distraction”.
Shehzad Poonawalla, spokesperson for the ruling BJP, defended the federal agencies. “Whosoever indulged in corruption and loot will now have to pay back,” he said.
“They pocket the public money and grab public property and play the victim card when action is taken… They made public property their own in the National Herald case also.”
