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Journalism of Courage
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed a chargesheet against businessman Robert Vadra, the husband of Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, in connection with its money laundering investigation in a deal for a 3.53-acre plot in Shikohpur village in Gurgaon’s Sector 83 in 2008.
According to the chargesheet, the plot of land was purchased by a company called Sky Light Hospitality Private Limited from one Onkareshwar Properties Private Limited. The payment cheques were issued by another company, Sky Light Realty Private Limited.
Both Skylight Hospitality and Sky Light Realty are owned by Vadra. The companies had a credit balance of Rs 1 lakh each at the time of execution of the sale deed. The cheques were never presented to any bank for encashment at that time.
The ED opened its investigation based on an FIR registered by the Gurgaon Police on September 1, 2018, alleging that Vadra, through Sky Light Hospitality, had purchased the land on the basis of a false declaration.
The ED has attached 43 immovable properties linked to Vadra and his entities, including Sky Light Hospitality and others.
Onkareshwar Properties, the company that sold the land to Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality, has a record of links with politicians.
The company was registered in New Delhi on September 28, 2004, with two directors – Gobind Kumar Kanda, a resident of Sirsa, and Pradeep Kumar, a resident of Gurgaon – each of whom owned 5,000 equity shares.
Gobind Kanda was the BJP candidate in the bypoll for the Ellenabad Assembly seat in 2021. He lost to Abhay Chautala of the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) by more than 6,500 votes.
Gobind Kanda is the brother of Gopal Goyal Kanda, who founded the short-lived MDLR Airlines and is a former MLA (2019-24) who has been close to the INLD, Congress, and BJP at various times. From 2009-12, Gopal Kanda was a Minister in the Congress government of Bhupinder Singh Hooda. In 2014, the brothers launched their own outfit, Haryana Lokhit Party.
Over the past few years, Gopal Kanda has been a staunch supporter of the BJP. He contested the 2024 Assembly election for the Sirsa seat with the support of the INLD, led by the late Om Prakash Chautala at the time, and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The BJP, which had denied Kanda the party ticket, withdrew its candidate days before the election. However, Kanda lost to the Congress’s Gokul Setia by more than 7,000 votes.
Between 2007 and 2011, one of the directors of Onkareshwar Properties was a resident of Noida named Sandeep Dahiya, who is a relative of former Chief Minister Hooda’s wife Asha Hooda. Sushil Gupta, a resident of Rohtak and another close Hooda aide, was a director at the company from 2010 to 2012.
At the time Onkareshwar Properties sold the Shikohpur land to Vadra’s company, Hooda was Chief Minister of Haryana, and Hooda’s aide Satyanand Yajee and his wife Godavari Yajee were directors at Onkareshwar. As per records with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Onkareshwar’s paid-up capital on September 30, 2011 was Rs 25 lakh, and 98 per cent of the company was owned by Satyanand and 2 per cent by Godavari.
In February 2008, Sky Light Hospitality, which Vadra had launched in 2007 with a capital of Rs 1 lakh, bought about 3.5 acres of land in Manesar-Shikohpur in Gurgaon from Onkareshwar for Rs 7.5 crore. The plot was mutated in favour of Sky Light Hospitality the next day, and the title of the land was transferred to Vadra’s company within 24 hours of the purchase. This process usually takes at least three months.
A month later, Hooda’s government gave Sky Light Hospitality permission to develop a housing project on approximately 2.71 acres of the land. This led to an immediate increase in the value of the land.
In June 2008, real estate major DLF agreed to buy the plot for Rs 58 crore — which meant that the value of the property had increased by close to 700% within weeks. The money was paid to Vadra in installments, and in 2012, the mutation transferring the colony licence on the land was finally transferred to DLF.
In October 2012, Ashok Khemka, a retired IAS officer who was Haryana’s Director General, Consolidation of Land Holdings and Land Records-cum-Inspector General of Registration, started looking into Vadra’s land deals in the state. He was transferred almost immediately, on October 11, 2012, on the orders of Chief Minister Hooda.
But the officer managed to complete his investigation, and on October 15, 2012, set aside the mutation of the land on the ground that the assistant consolidation officer, who had sanctioned it, was not competent to do so.
After the cancellation
After Khemka’s order cancelling the mutation of the land sparked a major controversy, the Haryana government formed a panel of three senior IAS officers — Krishna Mohan, Rajan Gupta, and K K Jalan — to look into the issue.
In April 2013, Hooda’s government gave a clean chit to both Vadra and DLF, and instead accused Khemka of “acting beyond the authority vested in him”.
A year after coming to power in 2014, the BJP government of Manohar Lal Khattar set up a commission of inquiry under Justice SN Dhingra (retd), which submitted its 182-page report to the government on August 31, 2016.
Khattar’s government did not make the contents of the report public. In November 2016, after Hooda challenged the setting up of the commission of inquiry before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the government told the court that the report “shall not be published”.
In 2018, Hooda and Vadra were booked for alleged irregularities in land deals, including this deal. In an affidavit filed before the HC, the Haryana government submitted that the “Tehsildar Manesar, Gurugram” had reported that “Skylight Hospitality sold 3.5 Acre (land in question) to DLF Universal Limited on September 18, 2012 and no regulation/ rules have been violated in said transaction”.
Hooda has always denied all allegations of wrongdoing, and dismissed the accusations as “political vendetta”.
