A city court on Friday admitted Janata party president Subramanian Swamy’s complaint against Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, alleging “grabbing” properties worth crores of rupees of the defunct National Herald newspaper company. After hearing the petition, the Metropolitan Magistrate Gomti Manocha directed Swamy to testify in the case on July 9.
The case, which is popularly known as Herald case came into public domain few months ago, when Swamy alleged that Sonia and Rahul floated a new private company called Young Indian, and acquired the Associated Journals, the publishers of National Herald newspaper by using loans worth `90 core from the Congress party.
Apart from the Congress president and the vice-president, the petition filed by Swamy had made Congress leaders Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernadez and other directors of Young Indian Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda as accused.
“The Associated Journal limited (AJl) held a board meeting and declared that it could not discharge the `90 crore debts to Congress. It resolved without reference to and approval of the shareholders that Young Indian would own its debt, and for `50 lakh its entire share equity would be transferred to Young Indian. Thus AJl, a public limited company with thousands of shareholders and thousands of crores worth assets became a wholly owned company of Young Indian controlled by Sonia and Rahul,” alleged the petition.
Sonia and Rahul have 38 per cent each share in the newly floated company Young Indian, which now controls the 99 per cent shares of AJl. In his petition, Swamy contended that National Herald was not owned by the Nehru family, but the general public, particularly those who joined the freedom movement, contributed most of the share capital. Hence, Young Indian had no right to appropriate 99 per cent of AJl shares with funds from the Congress, he said.