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Updated: Sep 11, 2019 01:17 IST

Enforcement Directorate has asked arrested Karnataka Congress leader DK Shivakumar’s daughter Aishwarya to appear before it at its headquarters in New Delhi on Thursday.

The agency wants to question her about a business trip she took in July 2017, which an ED official said was part of agency’s money laundering probe into Shivakumar. The Congress leader is being probed for alleged money laundering by way of using shell companies and huge cash transactions carried out through some persons in Karnataka Bhawan in Delhi. Shivakumar is currently in ED’s custody.

The ED case, registered in September 2018, against Shivakumar and his associates, including a transporter Sunil Kumar Sharma, who was accused of transporting huge cash on regular basis through hawala channels, Sachin Narayan (Shivakumar’s business partner), Hanumanthaiah, and N Rajendra, a caretaker of Karnataka Bhawan.

In Bengaluru, a massive rally will be organised by the Vokkaligara Sangha, a body that represents Shivakumar’s community, on Wednesday against the alleged discrimination by the Centre.

Meanwhile, in a series of tweets, Shivakumar lashed out at the government.

He said that political vendetta had become “stronger than the law in this country”.

“I would like to reiterate that I have done nothing wrong & am a target of vendetta politics,” he tweeted.

On Monday, the agency had also searched the house of Anjeya Hanumanthaiah, an employee of Karnataka Bhawan in New Delhi, who is accused of hoarding cash on behalf of Shivakumar while another accused in the case, transporter Sunil Sharma, was examined at ED headquarters.

In a prosecution complaint (equivalent to a charge sheet) filed before the Special Court for Economic Offences at Bengaluru in June last year, the IT department had claimed that Shivakumar paid Rs. 5 crore to the All India Congress Committee as well through his political associate V Mulgund.