In a bizarre incident, the nephew of Madhya Pradesh CM Kamal Nath disappeared from ED office when he was being questioned in connection with the Agusta Westland chopper scandal. According to reports, Ratul Puri escaped from the Enforcement Directorate office in Delhi using the excuse of going to the bathroom.
Ratul Puri is a businessman and the chairman of the Hindustan Powerprojects. He is being probed by ED in the VVIP chopper case, and had appeared for questioning earlier also. He was asked to come to the ED office on Saturday for further questioning, and accordingly, he was present there today morning. After a brief questioning, he said that he needs to use the urinal, but after that, he never returned. Some media reports say that he left the ED office when he was asked to wait for sometime before his questioning begins.
It is speculated that ED was about to arrest him today. Reports say that he may have come to know about that while in the ED office, and therefore gave the agency a slip the moment he found an opportunity to avoid getting arrested.
Although Puri has been maintaining that he has no relation with the chopper deal and the scam involved with it, ED had confronted him with evidence that they have collected recently. He is suspected of receiving kickbacks from the UPA era chopper deal which was cancelled by the UPA government after the details of the scam emerged. The Income Tax department had also raided his home recently and recovered several documents. Rajiv Saxena, who has turned approver in the case, had revealed about Puri’s link with the deal. The probe agencies say that his bank accounts were used to divert the kickback money in the deal.
A #Delhi Court on July 27 granted interim relief from arrest to #RatulPuri, nephew of #MadhyaPradesh CM #KamalNath, till July 29, in connection with a money laundering case related to the Rs 3,600-crore #AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal scam.
Photo: IANS pic.twitter.com/qpkZhPDlfQ
— IANS Tweets (@ians_india) July 27, 2019
Soon after coming out of ED office, Ratul Puri approached a Delhi Court for anticipatory bail. The court has granted him interim relief from arrest till July 29.
