Amarinder questions Centre's probe against son, wife

Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh today questioned the timing and motives of the Centre in pursuing the issue of purported foreign accounts of his wife Preneet Kaur and son Raninder Singh even after a Swiss bank authority "certified" that they did not hold such accounts.
"The purported accounts shown against the name of his wife and son, had 'zero' balance. How is it possible to have an account that too in a Swiss Bank without any balance?" he said.
"This was despite the fact that the HSBC authorities had certified five years ago that they (Kaur and Raninder) did not have any account anywhere with it (the HSBC)", he told reporters.

He alleged, "since the Punjab Assembly elections were not far away, BJP and Akalis wanted to keep the issue alive during the elections although they know it too well that it will not stand anywhere in the court of law".
He also announced that he will be seeking quashing of the complaint in the higher court since it had no basis.
"We cannot take it lying down and won't allow ourselves to be blackmailed and we will call their bluff", Amarinder said, while pointing out that the issue was being deliberately raised from time to time to "malign him" and his family in the election year as they had nothing against him.

The former Chief Minister reiterated it was an act of vendetta initiated deliberately in the run up to the 2017 assembly elections by initiating a "media trial".
He also showed letters and some other documents purportedly from the HSBC authorities certifying that neither Preneet Kaur nor Raninder Singh had any account in any of the branches of the HSBC anywhere in the world.
He claimed that these documents had been submitted to the Income Tax authority long back and they had initially stopped pursuing the matter.