New Delhi, Sept. 26: The CBI today raided Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh's residence in an assets case, swooping minutes after he and his family had left for his second daughter's wedding at a Shimla temple.
Agency sources claimed they didn't know about the marriage and that the embarrassing timing of the raid -probably the first on a serving chief minister - was a "coincidence".
But the Congress, Virbhadra's party, termed the timing "inhumane" and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of vengefulness. The BJP sought the six-time chief minister's immediate resignation.
Virbhadra, 81, who heard about the 7.55am raid at the temple, returned home around 11am after the completion of the wedding, cancelling the lunch organised for the guests at a hotel. With him were ministers, government officials and party supporters.
But the raid - held simultaneously with searches at 12 other places, including houses and offices in Gurgaon and Delhi - went on for another four to five hours.
Agency sources said they had obtained a Delhi court's permission for the raids, and informed the chief secretary and state police chief immediately after arriving at Virbhadra's official residence, Holly Lodge.
The CBI later registered a case of unaccounted wealth against Virbhadra, wife Pratibha, Virbhadra's brother Chunni Lal and a Life Insurance Corporation agent, Anand Chauhan, under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Virbhadra is accused of amassing an unexplained Rs 6.3 crore when he was Union steel minister between 2009 and 2012, before having to resign amid corruption charges. He has denied wrongdoing.
A raiding team of 18, which included a few Enforcement Directorate officers too, arrived at his residence about "15 to 20 minutes after" Virbhadra, his family and their guests had left for the Sankat Mochan temple around 7.30am.
"We didn't know about the wedding. It was just a coincidence -we had no plans to embarrass him. He had kept the wedding very private and low-key," a CBI official told The Telegraph.
Among the other places raided were Virbhadra's ancestral homes in Shimla's Rampur and Saharan neighbourhoods and in Delhi, his son's farmhouse in Gurgaon, Chauhan's home in Delhi as well as some private firms' offices.
When he was Union minister, Virbhadra had invested Rs 6.1 crore in life insurance policies for himself and family members through Chauhan, CBI sources said.
After resigning in 2012, he filed revised income-tax returns for the years 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12 showing a huge increase in his income from apple orchards, which till then used to be "a few lakh rupees", the sources added. They did not specify the amounts.
"The agricultural income as claimed by him in his revised ITRs was not found to be tenable," CBI spokesperson Devpreet Singh said.
He added that today's raids had yielded "property papers, investments, hard disks, pen drives, etc".
Agency sources said Virbhadra was suspected to have granted favours in return for unsecured loans obtained from some private companies in the names of his wife and children.
Agency sources said they didn't need clearance from the Centre or the governor for raiding a chief minister but Congress senior Ghulam Nabi Azad saw the Prime Minister's hand.
"Prime Minister Narendra Modi's hate agenda against the Congress and its leaders has reached its zenith today," the leader of the Rajya Sabha Opposition said, alleging a "shocking example of politics stooping to its lowest ebb".
"The entire family, including guests from the bride's and bridegroom's sides, were proceeding to the temple for the marriage when the government... blinded by personal revenge, was raiding (Virbhadra's) residence," Azad said.
"The Modi government's lust for settling political rivalries has made it alien to India's culture and tradition of not disrupting the marriage of a daughter. This inhumane, cruel and revengeful behaviour is characteristic of the personal style of the Prime Minister."
