I-T department grills Rajas wife, brother

TIRUCHY: Former telecom minister A Raja’s wife and brother appeared here on Friday before the deputy director, Income Tax (I-T) Department, Tiruchy region.Raja’s wife Parameswari, brother Dr A Ramachandran and niece Baby alias Preethi arrived at the I-T office with a team of auditors, including Francis, Muthukumarasamy and Suresh Kumar, around 10.45 am.Sources said they were interrogated over a money transaction to Swan Telecom, in which Baby was one of the directors.Albert Manoharan, the deputy director of the I-T Department, Tiruchy, and inquiry officer of 2G spectrum related accounts here, held an inquiry with them for more than three hours.However, Francis said Raja’s relatives were called for a routine inquiry as they had filed their income tax returns from the office. Sources close to the former minister offered a different take in connection with the inquiry. They said Raja’s family had sold an ancestral property and an inquiry was ordered by the income tax department for submission of the account of each family member.