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‘Heading back home’: Karti Chidambaram vows to fight visa scam allegations
Karti Chidambaram, the Sivaganga MP, said he intended to continue to fight every one of the central government's motivated attempts to target his father, P Chidambaram, through him.
Congress MP Karti Chidambaram, whose was named in an FIR lodged by the CBI in an alleged visa scam case, said on Tuesday that he was heading home from a scheduled trip abroad and that he would fight the malicious, patently false accusations, adding truth shall prevail.
Last week, a number of locations related to associates of Karti, son of senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, were raided by the central investigation agency, following which, a close aide of the MP was arrested.
The CBI had informed the court that Karti Chidambaram will come back to India on May 24 and had been directed to appear before them in 16 hours.
Taking to Twitter, Karti wrote, “It does not intimidate me that the central government is once again using its agencies to accuse me of a malicious and completely fabricated charge… For what it's worth, I firmly state that I am not associated with this vis issue directly, indirectly, vicariously or even telepathically. The allegations against me by the CBI are ludicrous. I categorically deny them.”
The Sivaganga MP said he intended to continue to fight every one of the central government's motivated attempts to target his father through him.
He further said he had no relationship with any of the corporate entities mentioned in the FIR in which he had been named. “I say with certainty that I have never facilitated even a single Chinese national in their visa process, let alone 250.”
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Karti said he had no knowledge of the procedures, process and formalities that needed to be fulfilled to obtain visas related to project work in India. “I know no person who has the authority to issue such visas.”
He said professionals associated with him were being targeted and harassed and their lives were being "wrecked" and "freedoms taken away, just like mine" had been over the past many years.
He further said he had full faith in the country's judiciary and trusted the institution to stand by the truth. “But if this is not harassment, not a witch hunt, then what is?”
On May 20, a Delhi court directed the CBI to give a three-day prior notice to the Congress MP if it required to arrest him in connection with the case.
The case is related to an alleged bribe of ₹50 lakh paid for clearing visas of 263 Chinese nationals working at Talwandi Sabo Power Ltd in Punjab. The incident reportedly took place in 2011 when Karti's father was the Union home minister in the Congress-led UPA government.
