Virbhadra Singh meets Sonia Gandhi after grilling by ED in money laundering case

New Delhi: A day after Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh was grilled by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a money laundering case registered against him and others, the Congress veteran met party president Sonia Gandhi here on Friday.

However, the details of the meet were not made public.

The Enforcement Directorate had summoned Virbhadra Singh in the case on April 18 for Thursday's appearance.

Singh, who arrived at the agency's office in his official car with a covered beacon at about 12 noon on Thursday, left the premises at about 9:20 PM.

The Investigating Officer (IO) is understood to have confronted him with some documents the agency had seized and recovered in this case of alleged disproportionate assets.

When the chief minister arrived at the ED office, sporting his trademark 'Himachali cap', he did not interact with mediapersons on the spot but was seen raising his fist in the air and heard reciting some lines of a patriotic poem: "Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mein hain, dekhna hai zor kitna bazu e qaatil mein hai (The desire to make a sacrifice is in our hearts, let us see what strength there is in the arms of our executioner)."

The ED summons has come close on the heels of filing of a charge sheet by the CBI against Singh, his wife and others for allegedly amassing assets worth around Rs 10 crore disproportionate to their known sources of income.

The Enforcement Directorate had already questioned his wife Pratibha and son Vikramaditya Singh in the case.

It had filed a criminal case under the PMLA against the politician, his wife, Life Insurance Corporation agent Anand Chauhan, his associate Chunni Lal, and others in 2015 following the Central Bureau of Investigation's FIR dated September 23 that year.

Joginder Singh Ghalta, Prem Raj, Vakamulla Chandrasekhar, Lawan Kumar Roach and Ram Prakash Bhatia are also named in the case.

The case was registered after a preliminary inquiry found that Virbhadra Singh as Union Minister from 2009 to 2012 allegedly accumulated assets worth Rs 6.03 crore, which were disproportionate to his known sources of income.