Behind the back lots of things happen. The Enforcement Directorate, for example, on February 4, questioned a very close aide of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a money laundering case involving a jailed Trinamool Congress spokesperson. And it is the kind of roundabout thing that makes a person wonder “What’s Rahul Gandhi’s aide getting into with the Trinamool”? And what’s Gujarat doing in the mix?
Well, it involves alleged money laundering. And Rahul Gandhi aide is a fellow named Alankar Sawai, who does research for the Wayanad MP, the Bharat Jodo Yatra icon. The Trinamool connection is Saket Gokhale, a TMC spokesperson who has been left adrift by the TMC.
It could be because Gokhale is prone to talking more than what he is told to and he has been saying some very unsavoury things about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In his short stint as TMC spokesperson, Gokhale’s tongue for words landed him in multiple verbal skirmishes with rival party spokespersons and television anchors, primarily because he refused to step back from the brink.
Gokhale’s Twitter timeline tells his story of “never say no” to a good fight with the BJP, and its allies and acolytes. Gokhale was an emerging nuisance for the BJP. Before he became TMC spokesperson, Gokhale used to talk like a machinegun set at rat-a-tat speed, eager to join any opposition party as a spokesperson.
Gokhale is a go-getter with an unsavoury yen for unfriendly words. The story goes that Gokhale was arrested and brought to Gujarat on charges of crowd-funding and using the proceeds to wine and dine with his friends, and hobnob with enemies of the BJP.
The TMC spokesperson continues to be behind bars. He allegedly also received cash payments from Rahul Gandhi’s aide Alankar Sawai when Gokhale was in the Trinamool Congress.
February 4, the ED questioned Sawai and also recorded his statement in the PMLA case dogging Saket Gokhale. Earlier this week, AlankarSawai was brought face to face with Saket Gokhale. Sawai and money are not strangers. In his role as a banker, before he became Rahul Gandhi’s aide, Sawai was used to cash, big amounts of cash.
Sawai nowadays heads Rahul Gandhi’s research team. The ED called on Sawai after it arrested Gokhale on January 25 and took him out of the clutches of the Gujarat Police, not that ED custody is any less of a clutch! The question is, why is crowd-funding a financial irregularity for some?
Allegedly, Rs 23.54 lakh was deposited in Gokhale’s bank account a year ago. The deposit was made in cash. The ED wanted the custody of Gokhale. There was no written agreement between Sawai and Gokhale for the social media help the latter was to do for the Congress. It was a verbal deal.
The cash deposits were made and received when Gokhale was a TMC party member. Sawai was questioned and his statement recorded under the PMLA. Apparently a “fund trail” has been traced and found though Sawai refuted making payments in cash. Gokhale was arrested from Delhi in 2022 for “misuse of money collected through crowd-funding”.
The charge is that “huge amounts of money collected through crowd funding have been splurged on speculative share trading, wining and dining and other personal expenses which appear to be extravagant in nature.”
Great. All it needs is “extravagant in nature” and “splurged” to put somebody behind bars. What’s more scary is the signal that “the agency is likely to question more people”.
That’s like being lodged in the death row and not knowing when the hangman will be coming. The Enforcement Directorate is no better than the CBI which got away with being “cage bird”. The ED is a caged cat with nine lives. It is not going anywhere and will be around in its current avatar for a long time, till as long as the Modi Government continues to call the shots.
The signals emanating are ominous. The Modi government and the ED appear to have a plan and using Saket Gokhale to get to Alankar Sawai and the Congress must be part of the screenplay. The TMC, too, is rather off-beat. Otherwise, Mamata Banerjee is like the proverbial mother-hen, protective and ferocious, when it comes to Trinamool functionaries and TMC workers. There’s something amiss happening. (IPA Service)
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