Herald case posted for April 8

In the National Herald case, a Delhi court on Monday directed the Congress to comply with its order and submit its balance sheet for the year 2010-11. The matter has been posted for April 8.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi, vice-president Rahul Gandhi, and five others are accused, while senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy is the complainant in the case.

The counsel for the Congress, Badar Mahmood, said the court summons was received quite late, on March 19. He was accompanied with a Congress office peon, who said that not many people were present when he received the summons. When Metropolitan Magistrate Lovleen asked which leaders were present, the peon said that nobody was present.

Swamy lampooned the Congress for sending the peon in a tweet: “The Congi office peon appeared in Court. He said summons came on Saturday. But no office bearer in party HQ present to give Balance Sheet!!” He also said that the party headquarters was a “haunted place.”

Mahmood also complained about the lack of clarity about the year of which the documents asked. Summons was not clear as to whether it was for 2010, 2011 or for both, he said.

On March 11, the court had summoned the balance sheets of 2010-2011 of the Congress and Associated Journals Pvt Ltd (AJL). It had ruled that these documents could not be termed as “personal documents” of the accused.

The counsel appearing for AJL, senior advocate R.S. Cheema, said that the documents summoned by the court are already in the court records. “We are taken for a ride. The documents summoned are already on the record of the court. Its only for the purpose of publicity that the complainant has filed this complaint as he has been tweeting about this case from his social networking account Twitter.”

Three years ago, Swamy had filed a case against Sonia, Rahul, and others for allegedly conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds in the National Herald case. The trial court summoned the accused on June 26, 2014.