CBI submits report on Mahua cash-for-query case to Lokpal | India News

NEW DELHI: The CBI is learnt to have submitted its report to the anti-corruption ombudsman Lokpal in connection with the cash-for-query case involving Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra and businessman Darshan Hiranandani.The content of the report has not been disclosed yet. The Lokpal will study the findings of the investigation and give further directions to the agency. A charge sheet may be filed subsequently based on the findings of the report, officials explained.Last year in March, the CBI had registered an FIR against Moitra in connection with the case on the reference of the Lokpal. The Lokpal had issued instructions to the CBI after receiving findings of the agency’s preliminary inquiry into allegations made by BJP Lok Sabha member Nishikant Dubey against Moitra.Moitra was accused of asking questions in the Lok Sabha in exchange for cash and gifts from Hiranandani to target industrialist Gautam Adani and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The agency had subsequently examined businessman Darshan Hiranandani and a dozen others in the case.Before that, Hiranandani had submitted a “sworn” and notarised affidavit to the Ethics Committee of Lok Sabha alleging that Moitra had provided him with her “Parliament login and password” so that he “could post questions directly on her behalf when required”.Moitra had replied saying that the only things she had received from Hiranandani, the CEO of the Hiranandani Group, as gifts were “one scarf, one lipstick and one eye shadow”. Lok Sabha had expelled Moitra in December 2023 for “unethical conduct”. Moitra challenged her expulsion in the Supreme Court.