Karti dubs Chidamabaram's arrest politically motivated witch-hunt

Chennai: Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram’s son Karti on Wednesday lashed out at the CBI for arresting his father in the INX media case, saying it was a “totally politically motivated witch-hunt”.

Minutes after Chidambaram, a former union minister, was taken to the CBI headquarters in New Delhi on Wednesday night amid high drama from his house, Karti said the case was apparently about events that happened in 2008.

“This is totally a politically motivated witch-hunt,” the Congress MP, who is an accused in the INX media case and out on bail, told reporters outside his residence here.

He alleged the entire thing was a drama and spectacle enacted by probe agencies to simply sensationalise and satisfy the “voyeuristic pleasure” of some.

“For events which happened in 2008 they filed an FIR in 2017 and in August 2019 they still don’t have a charge sheet which means there is no case,” he claimed.

The arrest of his father was an attempt aimed at diverting people’s attention from serious issues, Karti alleged.

“This is a completely trumped up, made for television, made for media kind of spectacle,” he charged.

He said that if the investigating agencies had a watertight case there would have been a charge sheet by now but there was none “after four raids, 20 summons and 11 days of custody,” Karti said referring to the action against himself.

Karti, who was in jail for 23 days before being granted bail by the Delhi High Court in March last year in the case, said he had been grilled by CBI for ten hours on most occasions when he appeared before the agencies.

To a question, he said his father “was not absconding, ” after the Delhi high court denied him anticipatory bail, maintaining it was not mandatory for such a person to produce himself before the investigating agencies.

Asserting that his father had appeared before the agencies whenever summoned, he said CBI had sought the presence of Chidambaram only once in this case and the ED a number of times.

“There had not been a single summon where he has not appeared,” he claimed.

Noting that they would face the case legally and through text judicial process, Karti expressed confidence that “we will be vindicated eventually. ”

CBI had registered an FIR in the case on May 15, 2017 alleging irregularities in the FIPB clearance granted to the media group for receiving overseas funds to the tune of Rs 305 crore in 2007 during Chidambaram’s tenure as finance minister.