Cash-for-query: CBI questions Dubai businessman Hiranandani

NEW DELHI: CBI is learnt to have examined Dubai-based businessman Darshan Hiranandani in connection with their investigation into allegations of corruption in raising questions in the House that had led to TMC leader Mahua Moitra getting disqualified from Lok Sabha last year. The agency has purportedly received a reply from Moitra as well but CBI didn’t confirm this.
Besides Hiranandani, a dozen others have supposedly been questioned in the case till now, sources said.The agency had given a questionnaire having over 50 questions to Hiranandani, the source added. CBI did not confirm if the questioning happened in Delhi or Dubai or if he was examined online.
Moitra has been accused of asking questions in Lok Sabha in exchange for cash and gifts from Hiranandani to target industrialist Gautam Adani and PM Narendra Modi. Last Oct, Hiranandani had submitted a “sworn” and notarised affidavit to Ethics Committee of Lok Sabha alleging that Moitra had provided him with her “Parliament login and password” so that he “could post questions directly on her behalf when required”. Moitra had replied saying that the only things she had received from Hiranandani, the CEO of Hiranandani Group, as gifts were “one scarf, one lipstick and one eye shadow”.
CBI had earlier approached Lok Sabha secretariat to get Ethics Committee report which had recommended Moitra’s expulsion from Parliament. CBI is conducting an inquiry into the matter on the basis of a complaint sent by Lokpal.