Valmiki case: Karnataka Congress holds protest against alleged actions taken by ED officials

Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], July 23 (ANI): Karnataka Congress, including Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and State Home Minister G Parameshwara, held a protest at the Gandhi statue outside Vidhan Soudha against alleged arbitrary actions taken by ED officials who are trying to implicate the Chief Minister and Karnataka government unnecessarily in the Valmiki Corporation case on Tuesday.

The Congress leaders alleged that ED officials investigating the Valmiki Corporation scam have forced a government officer to give a statement against the Chief Minister while interrogating him.

Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar said, “Today all legislators, including ministers are protesting against the ED for forcing the Assistant Director of the Department of Social Welfare to spell out the name of the CM Siddaramaiah. The minister himself had resigned to cooperate in a free and fair investigation… The SIT has already recovered 50 per cent of the amount and arrested a lot of people… Now the ED has become involved and they are forcing the Assistant Director of the Department of Social Welfare to say that the CM is involved… I have been targeted. CBI is harassing people like me… The FIR has been registered. The law will take its course. We do not want to meddle with the investigation… We will discuss it in the assembly also.”

Meanwhile, Karnataka Minister Priyank Kharge said, “BJP is doing a surgical strike on a democratically elected government in Karnataka. ED officials are pressurising state government officials to name CM and Deputy CM in the scandals they are not involved in… We are not questioning the functioning or investigation of authority here but you can’t pressurise government officials to name them (CM & DCM). It’s a scripted investigation that is going on.”

The alleged corruption case of Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation came to light after an official of the Corporation died by suicide and left a note containing an allegation of multi-crore corruption in the corporation.

The official identified as Chandrasekaran (45), a resident of the Kenchappa colony in Vinobanagar, allegedly died by suicide on May 26 after leaving a note containing an allegation of multi-crore corruption in the corporation. Chandrasekaran was a superintendent with the MVDC and was posted at its Bengaluru office.