Foreign assets: Amarinder's son gets court notice

Punjab Congress leader Amarinder Singh's son has been summoned by a court in Ludhiana on a complaint by the Income Tax Department regarding his foreign assets.
"Raninder Singh be summoned on July 26 under Section 277 of the Income Tax Act and Sections 177 and 181 of the IPC," Ludhiana's Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Ranjiv Vashishta ordered yesterday.
The IT department had alleged that Raninder made false statements twice under oath, denying being a beneficiary of foreign assets or having association with any such foreign entity, officials said here.
The department had credible information that the accused was a beneficiary of foreign assets, maintained and controlled through business entities, the official added.

Meanwhile, Amarinder Singh today dismissed the IT department complaint against his son, as a "classic case of political vendetta borne out of bruised egos and haunting memory of a humiliating defeat".
Reacting to the complaint, the Punjab Congress chief said that he had full faith in the judiciary and expressed confidence that his son will come out clean.

The PCC president said,it was not for the first time that the issue had been raked up.
"They have been doing it for the last two years since my Amritsar election and every time they tried it, they failed miserably and they will fail once again," he said.

The issue was also raised by Narendra Modi and Subramanian Swamy during an election speech in Barmer and Subramanian Swamy in run up to the 2014 General Elections.
"Otherwise how come the copies of the complaint were
circulated among the media almost at the same time while it was being lodged in the court?" Singh asked.
"Because they knew that the complaint will not hold any ground in the judicial process, they decided to go for a concurrent media trial ... To defame me much before the Honourable court comes out with its judgment," he said.
"I thought Union Minister Arun Jaitley had put his humiliating defeat behind him,..." Amarinder said

"It seems that every time he (Jaitley ) recalls the 2014 April of Amritsar his bruised ego haunts him and it concludes in an IT notice/ case against one or the other of my family members from time to time," he quipped.
The former Chief Minister said, he was not the only one in the Congress who was being targeted by the BJP government at the Centre, particularly its finance minister.
"This list is long and it tends to get longer with passage of time," he remarked, while claiming how the BJP government had tried to "falsely implicate" the Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Vice President Rahul Gandhi, P Chidambaram, his son and Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbadra Singh.

Singh said, with the elections in Punjab less than a year away and the BJP and their alliance government in the state headed for a complete rout, the central government was trying to contrive and create false accusations and allegations against his family.
"Every time these allegations have fallen flat and these will fall flat once more", he said, while expressing faith and confidence in country's judicial system.