“I had voluntarily taken a flight from Hyderabad so that I can be in Delhi at an appropriate time,” K. Kavitha, a Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader and daughter of former Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, wrote to the Enforcement Directorate officers on March 19, 2023 . This was in response to the agency issuing her summons to appear in New Delhi.
But much has changed in the last one year and the journey from the summons to the arrest has not only been long but also tumultuous. When the ED first recorded Kavitha’s statements, they had asked her to submit her mobile phones. The ED wanted to question her about her investments related to the business of Indo Spirits, which is under scanner in the Delhi excise policy scam case, and subsequent money flow in properties in Hyderabad.
On Saturday, while producing Kavitha before the district court in New Delhi, the ED informed the court that it has evidence of her intrinsic involvement in the conspiracy of policy formulation, kickback scheme and the final profits generated through money laundering. The ED claims the kickbacks are to the tune of Rs 100 crore.
The ED has made out a case of destruction of evidence, claiming that “despite her own disclosure that she uses FaceTime and WhatsApp from that device, there was no data found in those apps”. The agency referred to presenting nine phones for examination which were found formatted, but Kavitha has claimed these devices were with her staff.
The ED told the court it had sent ten devices to forensic units for extraction and forensic examination. “As per the report, at least four of these devices were formatted after the March 11 summons to her last year with a specific instruction to produce the digital devices used by her in the last two years.”
The ED claimed that in this way she “actively destroyed the digital evidence to conceal her role and involvement in this scam”.
The gloves are off with Kavitha’s return to Delhi after her arrest with focus back on the “summons” issued last year. Senior BRS leaders and her family have claimed that the arrest is a contempt of court since the Supreme Court will be hearing her petition against the ED summons on March 19.
Kavitha was first summoned on March 7, 2023 to appear on March 9 but she requested to be examined at her residence in Hyderabad first, even though she was in Delhi from March 8 and organised a demonstration at Jantar Mantar for the women reservation bill on March 10, sources said. She was then asked to appear in person on March 11 when she was questioned for nearly eight hours.
Kavitha was asked to present her mobile phone for examination, however , sources said she had not brought it with her and then on the request of the agency she submitted the same for examination. On examination, it was found that she had deleted the records from her device, the sources said.
She was then requested to appear again as the examination was still not complete and she committed to appear on March 16 and bring all the digital devices along with her in the next appearance. However, despite being present in Delhi on the date of summons that day, she did not appear before the ED and sent her authorised representative.
“No fruitful investigation could be done that day because of her non-cooperation on March 16,” said an official.
The next day she was summoned again and asked to appear on March 20. Kavitha appeared before the ED on March 20, 2023 when she was questioned for more than six hours, where instead of answering the questions of the investigating officer, she is learnt to have questioned the motives of the agency by attributing political motives to the case.
The souring of the exchanges did not allow the agency to make much headway, it is learnt and she was again summoned to appear on March 21 for further examination. Once again, she was asked to submit the mobile devices that she had used in the past. She submitted the mobile devices for examination but they were completely formatted or had been cleared out significantly, said sources, adding that in the interim, she approached the Supreme Court against the summons.
