Rahul Gandhi was questioned for more than ten hours yesterday.

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi is set to face another day of lengthy and rigorous questioning by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case linked to the National herald newspaper.

Here’s your 10-point cheatsheet to this big story:

  1. Rahul Gandhi reached the ED office for the second day of questioning. He was earlier at the Congress party office along with sister and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra amid supportive sloganeering by party workers. Several senior leaders, including KC Venugopal who was manhandled by the police yesterday, had also accompanied Mr Gandhi at the party office.

  2. Mr Gandhi arrived at the Enforcement Directorate (ED) headquarters on APJ Abdul Kalam Road in central Delhi with his “Z+” category CRPF security escort even as police personnel were deployed in huge numbers and section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) was imposed around the agency’s office just like Monday.

  3. Top Congress leaders like Harish Rawat and Randeep Singh Surjewala were detained from outside the Congress office as they tried marching to the ED’s office. Many workers have also been detained. Visuals show some of them being dragged on the road by the police. Police and paramilitary forces have been deployed in large numbers around the party’s main Delhi office. Several barricades have been placed to prevent movement towards the grand old party’s Akbar road office. 

  4. Section 144, which prohibits the assembly of people in large groups, was invoked around the party office area as well. Congress legislators claim they were going to the party office in separate vehicles, which does not violate the rules, but were anyway stopped and detained. 

  5. Earlier in the day, Congress party workers and senior leaders were seen in physical altercations with the police and security forces as they were stopped from entering the cordoned-off area. Several party workers and even a few MPs were detained as they tried to reach the party office. 

  6. Rahul Gandhi was questioned for more than ten hours yesterday in an alleged money laundering case connected to the National Herald newspaper. 

  7. The person being interrogated is given a set of questions and asked to write down the answers in their own handwriting. Sources say Mr Gandhi was asked around 25 questions yesterday and is expected to spend a long day at the probe agency’s office again. Unlike with the police, statements made to an ED officer are admissible in court. 

  8. The Congress again slammed the BJP-led Centre and accused it of using the probe agency as an “election management department” which it claimed has lodged over 5,000 cases to intimidate political adversaries. The cases vanish when one joins the BJP, the party alleged.

  9. Rahul Gandhi asked tough questions of the Centre on the Chinese encroachment, rising inflation, handling of the pandemic, the migrant workers’ plight during lockdowns, farmers’ protests and “communal unrest being fanned by the BJP”, senior Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala said, claiming that the government fears Mr Gandhi and that’s the only reason it is ‘targetting’ him.

  10. The Congress has alleged that the questioning is part of the ruling  BJP’s “vendetta politics”. Responding to the protests, Union Minister Smriti Irani had said the party was trying to pressurise the probe agency and the protest was not to save democracy but to save Rahul Gandhi’s properties worth Rs 2,000 crore.

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