The Congress Party has hit the streets today, claiming the verdict as a political vendetta and even slammed PM Modi in Rajya Sabha. The party stalled the Parliament today over the issue.
The National Herald case was not brought by the Modi Government. It surfaced even before Narendra Modi came to national centre stage. The case was first filed by Subramanian Swamy in 2012, who was not officially with the BJP then. Centre has no role to play in the case, as the matter is sub-judice now.
* The National Herald newspaper was started by Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru in 1938 during the freedom struggle against the British.
* Subramanian Swamy filed cases against Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and others, alleging that they had fraudulently acquired Associated Journal Ltd. (AJL), which used to publish The National Herald, and transferred its assets worth crores of rupees to another company, Young Indian.
* Swamy claimed that by paying just Rs 50 lakh, the Young Indian obtained the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore interest free loan, which AJL had owed to the Congress.
* Swamy further alleged that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi “fraudulently acquired properties of Associated Journals Private Ltd (AJPL) in Delhi, UP and other places worth Rs 1,600 crore.
* The trial court had summoned Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Motilal Vohra, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda on June 2014. The summons were stayed by the High Court.
* The trial court had observed that Young Indian was in fact created as a sham or a cloak to convert public money to personal use in order to acquire control over Rs 2,000 crore worth of assets of AJL.
* As the Delhi HC refused to give any exemption to Sonia and Rahul yesterday, they will have to appear before the trial court on December 19.