THE Income Tax Department questioned Robert Vadra, son-in-law of interim Congress President Sonia Gandhi, for the second consecutive day on Tuesday in connection with its probe against him under the benami assets law, official sources said. A team from the Chandigarh investigation unit of the department, that is handling the probe, was seen going inside Vadra’s office in the Sukhdev Vihar area of the national capital around 3 pm.

 

Vadra is married to Congress leader and Sonia Gandhi’s daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. After he was questioned on the first day on Monday, the 52-year-old had said the aim of the tax department’s action was to “digress” from the “real issues” concerning the country like the farmers’ agitation. On Monday, he was questioned for about eight hours and his statement was recorded as part of the proceedings related to the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act, sources had said. Tax department sources had said Vadra was asked to join the investigation at their office but as he cited the prevailing COVID-19 restrictions, I-T officials decided to visit his premises.

 

Officials had said the questioning was linked to the purchase of some land parcels by a firm linked to Vadra in Rajasthan’s border town of Bikaner in which another central probe agency, the Enforcement Directorate, had filed a money laundering case in 2015. The ED has questioned Vadra in this case in the past and had attached assets worth Rs 4.62 crore of his firm Ms Sky Light Hospitality (P) Ltd (now LLP) in 2019.