Bhubaneswar: Senior BJP leader and Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday mounted a fresh attack on Congress over the seizure of huge cash in recent raids by the Income Tax department officials from Odisha-based distillery owned by Rajya Sabha MP Dhiraj Sahu’s family.
Dharmendra’s attack came after the Congress MP from Jharkhand stated that the seized money does not belong to his party.
Dismissing Sahu’s statement, the senior BJP leader claimed that the world is aware of the fact that Dhiraj Sahu functioned as the “ATM of the Gandhi family”.
“The world knows that Dhiraj Sahu is the ATM for Gandhi family. Dhiraj Sahu is third time MP from the Congress and everybody says that he was the ATM for Gandhi family. People are unable to digest his statements,” Dharmendra told media.
The Union Education Minister further sought to know as to whom the huge seized money in Odisha belongs and where did the cash come from.
Stating that Sahu was running and manipulating the Excise Policy on his own terms, the BJP leader claimed that his modus operandi was to pressurise people by showing photographs with Gandhi family, with whom he had close links. Dharmendra suggested that Sahu was the financial provider for the Gandhi family.
“He (Sahu) was getting clicked with the Gandhi family and then pressurising people…Everyone knows about it,” he said.
Sahu had earlier dismissed the claims that the cash seized by I-T officials was owned by him, and said it belongs to some of my relatives and not him.
Stating that the matter is between them and the Income Tax department, the MP said his relatives will clarify on that later. But before all that, people should wait for a statement from I-T department. They will tell whether the seized cash is black money or white money. All the cash seized was from sales of liquor, he said.
‘Baldeo Sahu and Sons’ and ‘Ritesh Sahu and sons’ firms are owned by my relatives. Apart from that, there are other relatives of mine who own such farms too,” Sahu said.
