Prime Minister Narendra Modi today slammed the Congress party after over Rs 200 crore in cash was recovered from Jharkhand Congress Rajya Sabha MP Dhiraj Sahu. Prime Minister Modi said that citizens should see the piles of currency notes and then listen to the speeches of opposition leaders. "The countrymen should look at the pile of these notes and then listen to the honest 'speeches' of their leaders...Whatever has been looted from the public, every penny will have to be returned, this is Modi's guarantee," said PM Modi.
For the unversed, Income Tax Department conducted raids at the Boudh Distilleries Private Limited in Odisha and Jharkhand on Thursday and recovered huge cash from the company's office. The IT department was forced to order more counting machines to count the huge amounts of cash recovered. Baldev Sahu Infra Pvt Ltd company which is a group company of Boudh Distilleries, which is covered in the search is linked to Congress Rajya Sabha MP from Jharkhand, Dheeraj Sahu .The raids were conducted at Bolangir and Sambalpur in Odisha and Ranchi and Lohardaga in Jharkhand, according to Income Tax sources. The raids were also conducted at Baldev Sahu and Group of Companies' Satpura office. The tax department recovered currency notes of Rs 500, Rs 200 and Rs 100 stuffed in nine almiras. Yesterday, the tax department filled 157 bags with the notes after counting and when more bags could not be found, the cash was stuffed in sacks and were taken to banks. The total recovery could be around ₹ 250 crore.
Dhiraj Sahu, a Congress leader and businessman, represents Jharkhand as an elected Rajya Sabha MP. He has been elected for his third consecutive term as a Rajya Sabha MP. Hailing from Lohardaga in Jharkhand, Sahu's political journey began in 1977 when he first stepped into the realm as a student leader.He hails from an industrialist family, with his brother Shiv Prasad Sahu also holding a past MP position. The Sahu family has long-standing ties with the Congress party since India's independence. He faced imprisonment during the 1978 Jail Bharo movement. Sahu was elected to the Rajya Sabha in June 2009, marking the span of his political career over several decades. Dhiraj came into prominence in 2020 following the Supreme Court's dismissal of a petition associated with his election. During the Rajya Sabha elections in 2018, BJP candidate Pradeep Sonthalia stood against Dhiraj Sahu.