"Am I Vijay Mallya": Sena's Sanjay Raut After Seizure Of Property

Sanjay Raut said pressure is being created on him to bring down the Maharashtra government. "That I'll have to face the Central investigation agencies otherwise... They came to this house and threatened me. Then the action started," he added.

Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut, furious over the Enforcement Directorate's move to attach his properties in connection with the Rs 1,034 crore Patra Chawl land scam case, today mocked the agency, questioning if they considered him equal to fugitive tycoons like Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi. The action against him, he said, started after people pressured him to bring down the Maharashtra government.

Asserting that this has been going on for two years, Mr Raut told the media today that he had already informed the Rajya Sabha chairman -- Vice President Venkaiah Naidu -- about the matter.

"If this is a matter of political revenge, I intimated the Rajya Sabha chairman earlier about this. That pressure is being put on me to bring down the Maharashtra government. That I'll have to face the Central investigation agencies otherwise," he said. "They came to this house and threatened me. Then the action started," he added.

Earlier, Mr Raut had claimed that in January, he was contacted by "some senior BJP leaders" who asked him to switch sides and warned he would have to pay a price if he refused. He was told that central agencies will "fix" him if he did not budge. "We want to topple this government anyhow. We will either get President's Rule imposed or we will break a group of MLAs and form the government," he quoted them as saying.