ED Issues Fresh Summons to Uttarakhand Congress Leader Harak Singh Rawat

Congress leader and former Uttarakhand cabinet minister Harak Singh Rawat has been issued fresh summons by the Enforcement Directorate for questioning in a money laundering case investigation on April 2, official sources said on Wednesday.Rawat was earlier asked to depose before the central agency here on February 29 but he sought a deferment of the notice, citing some work.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided the premises of Rawat and others on February 7 in connection with the case.His daughter-in-law and former Congress leader Anukriti Gusain was also summoned earlier by the agency in this case but she too did not depose. Gusain quit the Congress earlier this month. 

The sources said Rawat has been asked to depose on April 2 at the ED office in Dehradun.The central agency earlier said it seized Indian and foreign currency worth about Rs 1.20 crore, gold and “voluminous” documents during the searches.However, an official statement issued by it did not specify what was recovered from where.The ED said its probe is against Birendra Singh Kandari, a “close associate” of Rawat, Indian Forest Service (IFoS) officer and former DFO Kishan Chand and former forest range officer Brij Bihari Sharma. Rawat, 63, is a former forest minister of the state who quit the BJP ahead of the 2022 Uttarakhand assembly polls and joined the Congress.