"Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt" – Juvenal, Satire X
November 2012.
Subramanian Swamy filed a private complaint in a Delhi court alleging that
Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have committed a fraud.
The allegations pertain to a
company started by Jawaharlal Nehru with 5000 freedom fighters in 1937. The
allegations had elements of fraud, land grabbing, usurping of shares, and spanned
over decades. We need not go into the details. The courts didn’t.
What is relevant is the
progression of the case under the aegis of the Enforcement Directorate (ED),
the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA), and the Indian judicial
system.
What is relevant is, that Swamy
filed a case in November 2012 against the Gandhis. The case found media
attention under the name National Herald.
August 2014. The ED
initiated a probe to discover if there was any money laundering in the case.
Curiosities begin. (1) The ED’s
investigation is usually built on a predicate offence, i.e. an FIR – not an
ongoing court case.
(2) Media
reports show the date of initiation of ED proceedings as 01-Aug-2014.
However, the ED mentions that the investigation
started in 2021, i.e. after an income tax probe in
the case. This runs contrary to the fact that the ED had already started the
process of raids and attachments in 2019.
(3) The timing is interesting –
right after a new government took office. Coincidence? Or it was the herald of
times to come.
(4) The Enforcement
Directorate closed the case quickly, citing technical reasons.
Of course, there was no predicate FIR to build on.
(5) Soon after, the head of the
ED was replaced.
Meanwhile, the petition filed
by Swamy dragged on.
September 2015. The ED
reopened the case under a new chief.
2015-19. Period of
silence. Interestingly, there were no national elections during this period.
May 2019. The ED
attached properties
worth Rs. 65 Cr at Panchkula and Rs.
16 Cr in Mumbai. Headlines screamed. One particular news anchor
hyperventilated. Swamy
got prime-time slots in all major channels. But attachments are not
convictions. They are just paperwork with drama.
June 2022. Rahul Gandhi
was questioned by the ED for 50
hours over five days including nine-hour
marathon sessions without breaks. The ED reported that Rahul
Gandhi avoided responses to 20% of the questions saying that he was
feeling too tired. Journalists camped outside the ED office like it was Bigg
Boss. Congress
workers were detained outside the ED office. The headlines said that democracy
was safe.
July 2022. Sonia
Gandhi, 75, was questioned by the ED for 11-12 hours over 3 days where she
answered about 100 questions. The agency had initially given Sonia
Gandhi the same dates as Rahul Gandhi, but her questioning was deferred after
she tested positive for Covid-19.
Meanwhile, the petition filed
by Swamy dragged on.
November
2023. The ED attached and took possession of assets
worth Rs. 751 Cr and has been taking the rent from the properties in
its own account. However, none of this money reached the citizens or victims.
April 2025. The ED
filed a Prosecution Complaint (PC or chargesheet) against Sonia Gandhi,
Rahul Gandhi, and Sam Pitroda in the case.
Normally, when the ED files a chargesheet,
it first arrests the accused and makes them go through the rigors of bail
provisions of PMLA. At
least that’s what Swamy seems to think.
A person cannot
be arrested till the conclusion of the trial if the chargesheet is
filed before the arrest. And as we have seen, the probability
of a trial concluding in a person’s lifetime is pretty bleak. By not
arresting the Gandhis before filing the chargesheet, the Gandhis were given
practical immunity from arrest.
The only way the Gandhis could
be arrested now was conviction after trial. But a hurdle was yet in the way.
Before the trial could even begin, the court had to take cognizance of the ED’s
chargesheet.
In a side-show of TV drama,
BJP workers marched towards the Congress office in Chandigarh to protest
against the chargesheeted party, and the police used water cannons on them –
visuals everyone remembers.
April 2025. The Delhi
court refused
to take cognizance of the chargesheet filed by the ED, citing the
change in rules when the CrPC was replaced by the BNSS in July 2024. There were
procedural demands to be fulfilled under the new law.
There was now a situation when
the chargesheet had been filed, but could not be taken cognizance of. The
newspapers reported ecstatically that the ED had done their job. The Gandhis
could not be arrested. Swamy was livid.
July 2025. Swamy withdrew his
petition. Since PMLA rests on a predicate offence, the ED case also collapsed.
This mirrors the larger
pattern of PMLA cases: ED raids. Headlines scream. Opposition cries. Government
smiles. Years pass. Nothing. The ED kept claiming “major breakthrough” every
few years, but nothing concrete ever happened. The Congress portrayed it as
political vendetta, BJP as “cleaning up corruption.” Both sides milked it for
narrative, no one cared for justice.
The National Herald case
didn’t convict anyone. But it did convict the public – to years of endless
noise and zero justice. Just a reminder that in India, cases are weapons, not
solutions. The only winners? Headlines and TRPs.
July 2025. The ED filed
a chargesheet against Robert Vadra, before arresting him.
