BJP trains guns on Koda aide
19 April 2014 11:36 PM GMT
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), after tightening the noose on meat exporter Moin Qureshi’s alleged hawala link, is now planning to raise the issue of Anil Bastawade, a close aide of former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda, in connection with the Rs 2500 crore money laundering scam in 2009. A senior BJP leader said: ‘If voted to power we are keen to reopen the investigation into the scam to trail the money that leads to some senior Congress leaders including Chaggan Bhujbal.’ Currently Bhujbal is the minister of public works and special assistance department in Maharashtra.
It was learnt that the central leadership of the BJP last Thursday has decided to raise this issue (apart from other scams during the Congress rule) in the ongoing Lok Sabha election. Even its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi wanted his party leaders to become more vocal on Bastawade and his alleged link with Congress leaders.
Interestingly, a day after the discussion over Bastawade at the BJP headquarters, on Friday, Koda was interrogated by CBI officials in New Delhi. The CBI said it was a continuation of the ongoing probe that also includes his role in allocation of Amarkonda Murgadangal coal block in Jharkhand to two firms of Congress Lok Sabha MP and industrialist Naveen Jindal. Earlier, the probe agencies also attached assets worth Rs 5 crore belonging to Bastawade in this connection for helping Koda to invest money abroad especially in Indonesia. Bastawade helped Koda and his other associates to invest and purchase a number of properties including mines in the middle-east, Indonesia
and Thailand.
Bastawade was hiding in his plush farm house in a remote island in Jakarta and was deported to India by CBI sleuths on January 2013. Narendra Modi while addressing a rally at Kanpur on Friday had said on the Moin Qureshi story that Millennium Post broke: ‘The (media) report claimed that the dealings were a big hawala racket, with the involvement of four central government ministers and a leader close to 10 Janpath.’
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