Former Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot, accused of embezzling Rs 2.56 crore in the ambulance scam on Saturday termed the charges against him as a "move to attract media glare" by the BJP-led state government. "It is a move to divert the attention from the scams carried out by the Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and is inspired by political vendetta," Gehlot said.
Reacting on the issue, a day after CBI took over the case and filed FIRs against him, Congress leader Sachin Pilot and sons of two former union ministers in the scam, Gehlot noted that there was no need for a probe by the central agency into the incident. The Raje government itself could have initiated an inquiry into the ambulance scam and got the facts probed, thus there was no need for a CBI probe," he told reporters at Jodhpur Civil Airport.
The Congress leader challenged Raje of first getting the various scam allegations against her and son Dushyant Singh probed by the CBI. "If she (Raje) had the courage, she herself would have got the allegations against her probed by the CBI in order to make things crystal clear. But instead of that, she brought this matter to the CBI just to hog the media and divert attention from the scams she was involved in," he said, adding that the law would take its own course and he need not worry.
Meanwhile, CBI today carried out searches at the residential premises of incumbent directors of Ziqitza Health Care Limited against which a case of alleged cheating was registered by the agency on the recommendation of Rajasthan government. The FIR registered by the state government has named former chief minister Ashok Gehlot and alleged Directors of the company Sachin Pilot, Karthi (son of former Union Minister P Chidambaram), Ravi Krishna (son of former Union Minister Vayalar Ravi), Ziqitza Health Care, its Director Sweta Mangal, the then Health Minister of the state Duru Mirza and the Director National Rural Health Mission, CBI sources said.
