A team from Assam Police, along with their Delhi counterparts, arrived Tuesday morning at Congress leader Pawan Khera’s Nizamuddin East home in the national capital, days after he alleged that Chief Minister Himanta Sarma’s wife owns three passports.
Pawan Khera, the chief of Congress’ Media and Publicity Department, was not at home when the Assam cops arrived. The Congress leader is in Hyderabad, party sources told NDTV.
The development comes barely two days after Khera had in a press conference on Sunday alleged that Assam Chief Minister Himanta Sarma’s wife, Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, owns three passports and that the family has business interests worth Rs 52,000 crore in the United States.
The searches followed the FIR filed by Sarma’s wife into the matter on Monday.
‘Pawan Khera, Pawan peda ban jaayega‘ (a play on the Congress leader’s name, sans any sweetness. The expression is hard to translate but expresses dismissiveness),” Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had threatened soon after, rejecting the allegations against his wife.
The Chief Minister further countered the allegations levelled by Congress, claiming that property documents used to link his family to apartments in Dubai were stolen from the document-sharing platform Scribd.
The 57-year-old Sarma, who quit the Congress in 2015 and crossed over to the BJP, said he would file a defamation case against the Congress leader.
Since the row broke out, the Chief Minister, who is looking to secure a second term, has targeted the Congress leader, sometime using words that err on the side of unparliamentary.
The state goes to polls in two days’ time, on April 9. The votes will be counted on May 4.