"Not Above Law, Not Running Away": Robert Vadra On Search At His Office

Robert Vadra, the brother-in-law of Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, who is being investigated in connection with a land deal, said he has always cooperated and will cooperate, but the process has to be fair and legal.
He asserted that he is not planning to run away to some other country, but "political blackmail is unacceptable".

"I am not running away. I am here and I will cooperate. I am not above the law and will follow the legal process, but you can't just storm into my house," said the 49-year-old businessman married to Sonia Gandhi's daughter Priyanka Gandhi.

Last week, the Enforcement Directorate had raided the Delhi office of Robert Vadra and the homes of two of his associates over a land scam case in Rajasthan. His legal team termed the raids as an attempt to plant "manufactured evidence" that can be fraudulently used against him.

Describing the searches as "political witch-hunt", Mr Vadra said that "they have been troubling me and my family for the last five years".

"It's all politically motivated. My mother has been in the hospital for the last three days. She is stressed, my children are stressed. We are clean which is why we aren't scared," he said.

Mr Vadra alleged that the agency conducting raids didn't have requisite permission or a search warrant and they just broke open the doors and ransacked his office.

"It is completely illegal — they did not even wait for the staff to open my client's office despite being required by the law to do so. They broke the locks and entered the office. They also broke open the locks of all the cabins in the office. ED officers didn't allow lawyers or his representatives into the office," he had said in a Facebook post a few days ago.

The Delhi-based businessman claimed that "they send agencies after me whenever they have to divert attention from real issues such as demonetisation, jump in fuel prices".

The Enforcement Director has been investigating allegations of forgery involved in the allotment of land in Bikaner. The agency has denied it searched the premises of people linked to Mr Vadra without a search warrant.

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