NEW DELHI: Making light of the police complaint filed in the National Herald case, Congress said on Monday the BJP govt has filed the fresh FIR out of the fear that its chargesheet was legally untenable in the absence of a govt complaint in the matter — calling it a desperate attempt to fill a major loophole in the proceedings driven by political vendetta against the opposition leadership.AICC spokesman and MP Abhishek Singhvi said the National Herald row is based on a private court complaint by Subramaniam Swamy, while the ED can only pursue a case that is filed by the govt or police or empowered officials.“I had argued in the court that this chargesheet is infructuous. The National Herald case has no police or ED complaint. And the judgement on the issue is pending. This is a major lacuna on which a big building was erected, and it could fall anytime. So, this fresh FIR is a desperate attempt to fill the gap of govt complaint in the case,” Singhvi argued, adding, “we can see what kind of foolishness can be committed when one works in haste out of vendetta.”Addressing a press conference, Singhvi said National Herald, an idealistic organisation which was part of the freedom struggle and run by AJL, was given huge loans by Congress to sustain its operations, since its debt had ballooned to Rs 90 crore at one point in time. He said to make AJL debt free, a routine measure was adopted that is staple for every such company – turn debt into equity by creating a not-for-profit company, Young Indian. “There was no transfer of property, no movement of money, while YI became the controlling company of AJL,” he said.But, he said, the govt and ED have claimed that creation of YI led to money laundering through property transfer. “This is a bizarre situation — no crime, no cash, no trail to find, the BJP still conjures a case out of its own twisted mind,” he said.
