The tricks of Congress leadership in National Herald case is coming to an end as the trial court has fixed for the final hearing of submission of documents for May 5. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were evading from the admission of their own documents filed in National Herald submitted in High Court and Supreme Court for the past few months. The problem for Sonia and Rahul is that these documents produced by them in the higher courts prove the case of their illegalities which is now ratified by Income Tax fine of Rs.249 crores[1].

On Saturday, appearing before the Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal, petitioner Subramanian Swamy said that the accused Congress leaders either say Yes or No to the documents submitted by themselves in the higher courts, that too sworn under oath. These documents expose the scam in the National Herald newspaper acquisition in covert ways, he said. Instead of countering Swamy, Congress leaders’ advocates preferred to bring the printouts of Swamy’s tweets amounting to “defamation” against Sonia and Rahul. The advocates even brought out the article of PGurus ReTweeted by Swamy about the Income Tax Assessment Orders[2]. The advocates argued that these all amount to defamation, rather than avoiding the boomerang that will happen if they admit a Yes or a No to the documents submitted by them in the higher courts.

Countering Congress lawyers, Swamy said that these kinds of arguments can’t go on and on and they have to explicitly admit or deny the truth about the documents. As Congress leaders were objecting to Swamy’s demand for production of documents for a long time, Swamy had produced the copies of the documents of Congress annual returns and documents of Associated Journal and Young Indian and sought Congress leaders should either deny or vouch for the authenticity of their own documents.

Apart from this the National Herald case came to a crucial stage after the Income Tax has slapped fine of Rs.249 crore to Sonia and Rahul controlled firm Young Indian. The Income Tax Order has proved that Congress claim of giving loan of Rs.90 crore was a total lie and they had engaged in hawala kind of money laundering with dubious Kolkata based shell companies[3]. The Order also said that floating of Young Indian was a covert operation to usurp the huge land assets of the National Herald publishing firm Associated Journal.

Congress lawyer’s strategy was to delay the case by straightway crossing petitioner Subramanian Swamy for a long time. But Swamy’s strategy was to first bring out the crucial documents in the scam and cut short the crossing procedures, say legal experts.

With Saturday’s order by the Magistrate’s, both sides have to argue on the production of the documents in the case. The arguments are to be started on May 5.

References:

[1] National Herald case: Why is Congress quiet on the IT fine of Rs.249.15 cr on Sonia-Rahul company? Mar 28, 2018, PGurus.com

[2] National Herald case: Read 105-page Income Tax Assessment Order against Young Indian exposing Rs.414 crores gain – Jan 22, 2018, PGurus.com

[3] Sonia and Rahul object to summoning of documents in National Herald case – Sep 18, 2016, PGurus.com