The sleuths of the Central Bureau Investigation (CBI) have on Tuesday - May 17 stormed the places that are connected to former Union Minister P Chidambaram and his son Karti Chidambaram and have been conducting raids after filing a fresh case against Karti Chidambaram in connection with his involvement of facilitating visa after receiving a bribe. 

According to reports, the case has been registered against Karti over certain foreign remittances to companies linked to him between 2010 and 2014. Speaking to PTI, the officials in the search have said that the case was registered after allegations that Karti facilitated visas of 250 Chinese nationals after receiving illegal gratification of Rs 50 lakh. The raids have come as trouble for P Chidambaram when he has been eyeing to win a Rajya Sabha seat from Tamil Nadu in the upcoming polls. 

The searches are being conducted at three locations in Chennai including P Chidambaram's residence in Nungambakkam, Chennai, three places in Mumbai, and one each in Karnataka, Punjab, and Odisha. While P Chidambaram has been in Delhi currently, his son Karti is not in the country presently. However, he has been watching the developments in Chennai. On Tuesday, in the midst of raids, he took to Twitter and wrote, "I have lost count, how many times has it been? Must be a record. My office has just updated on the 'record' twice in 2015, once in 2017, twice in 2018, and today."

In his earlier tweet, he wrote, "16/05/2017 will not be forgotten or forgiven." He made the tweets to apparently share how many times the CBI had conducted raids against him and by denoting a date, he has also reminisced similar searches conducted by the Central agency in 2017 against him and his father. During that time, the raids were said to be conducted with an allegation against the father and son duo over a particular deal which involved requiring permissions given to a TV channel, while Chidambaram was the Union Finance Minister. 

The deal was linked to Indrani Mukherjee and her company INX Media and the allegations were that the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), under the Finance Ministry, has cleared the deal at the behest of Karti Chidambaram. This time, Karti has been accused of facilitating visas of 250 Chinese nationals after receiving a Rs 50 lakh bribe. The CBI has filed a case with regard to this and has been conducting raids at various places. 

The CBI has said that the crime of facilitating visas has happened during the previous UPA regime. The CBI authorities had sniffed about the scam during the ongoing probe into the deal with INX Media. While the authorities were scrutinizing the transactions, the CBI had detected the payments worth Rs 50 lakh, which was found to be an illegal gratification for facilitating the visas of Chinese nationals. 

The CBI has also been conducting searches at 80, Lodhi Estate residence of P Chidambaram in Delhi. The CBI team had questioned the staff present at his house and taken some papers with them. It must be noted that Karti Chidambaram has got arrested in February 2018 in the INX Media case and he was later granted bail in March of the same year. Karti has been serving as a Lok Sabha MP from Sivaganga and his office has confirmed that the CBI is conducting searches at his residences. Several cadres of the Congress party have gathered before Chidambaram's residence in Chennai. 

My office has just updated on the “record” twice in 2015, once in 2017, twice in 2018 & today :) 6!

— Karti P Chidambaram (@KartiPC) May 17, 2022