National Herald case: New FIRs possibly to take care of jurisdictional gap, says Abhishek Singhvi

New Delhi: Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi, who is also the lawyer of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case, felt the new FIR against the Gandhis was designed to take care of a “huge jurisdictional gap” in the case after he pointed out during arguments in court that no predicate offence existed. Congress has termed filing of the FIR as part of “vendetta politics” by the Centre.

“The new FIR in the National Herald case is also an unintended and inadvertent tribute to my arguments before the trial judge pointing out that no predicate offence existed. I also said that if there is no predicate offence, there cannot be a PMLA offence,” Singhvi said on Sunday. “Possibly to take care of that huge jurisdictional gap, the present FIR with a minor change has been filed. Overzealous prosecutor and over clever prosecution. Please remember this is criminal law, not supposed to be adversarial or malicious,” he said, referring to the Delhi Police filing a new FIR on an ED complaint.

Singhvi again questioned the merit of the National Herald case, claiming it involved no movement of money or transfer of immovable property.

“Ironically, the Gandhis and other Congress functionaries as directors of Young Indian cannot get dividends, cannot distribute profits, get not one perk, yet are accused of money laundering,” he said.

Another spokesman Jairam Ramesh termed the case “bogus” and alleged that “Modi-Shah duo is continuing with its mischievous politics of harassment, intimidation and vendetta” against the top Congress leadership.