New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday searched the premises of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's personal secretary Bibhav Kumar, AAP Rajya Sabha MP and national treasurer N.D. Gupta, and some persons linked to the Aam Aadmi Party as part of a money-laundering probe into charges that the AAP and some officials received kickbacks of `21 crore from a Delhi Jal Board contractor.
Soon after the raid, Delhi minister and senior AAP leader Atishi accused the BJP-led Centre of trying to “scare and silence” the AAP by conducting raids on its leaders.
The residences of Bibhav Kumar, former Delhi Jal Board member Shalabh Kumar, the office of N.D. Gupta, and the premises of chartered accountant Pankaj Mangal and others associated with the AAP were covered in the search action.
This raid is part of a money-laundering investigation focusing on alleged bribes that were garnered through irregularities in the DJB tendering process and purportedly channelled as election funds to the Aam Aadmi Party, the ED officials said. A dozen premises were searched by probe agency’s officials from as early as 7 am under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Hitting out at the AAP, Union minister and BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi said Kejriwal’s government has put the governance model of Delhi on “ventilator” by focusing solely on its “publicity, drama and scams”. Listing alleged scams by the AAP, she said those who created space for themselves by projecting themselves as “outright honest” have now become “synonymous with corruption”.
In response to the raids, Atishi accused the authorities of attempting to “intimidate” the AAP. The raids came hours before she claimed at a press conference that the ED had “deleted” audio recordings of witness statements in certain cases, including the excise policy probe involving AAP functionaries, a charge denied by the Central agency. The ED officials said the agency was proposing to take legal action against the Delhi minister and that no footage was deleted. It said audio recordings of interrogation began only in October 2023.
“Yesterday, I posted on Twitter about doing a big expose on the ED. In response, to threaten the AAP they raided the residences of people related to the AAP,” Atishi charged.
“This is the way the BJP is trying to threaten the AAP and intimidate its leaders to suppress their voices. I would like to tell the BJP and Prime Minister Modi and their agencies that the AAP is not scared of their threats.”
She claimed that despite a two-year probe in the Delhi excise policy case, the ED has not been able to recover anything. “For the past two years, AAP leaders have been threatened like this. In the name of ‘liquor scam', investigating agencies CBI and ED have been raiding AAP leaders now and then in Delhi. But despite such investigations for nearly two years, the ED has not been able to find anything," she alleged.
The Delhi minister also claimed “many accused, witnesses, and government witnesses have come forward and said that they were pressured” to record their statements.
She also alleged that one of the accused in the excise policy case had applied in court and sought CCTV footage because he was investigated by the ED once along with a government witness. During that investigation, statements were given, and there was a CCTV camera installed in the room.
“However, it was found that the statement produced in court and what happened during the investigation in the room is completely different. Also, when the ED gave the footage, it deleted the audio of the footage. ED deleted all conversations that happened in that room, and evidence was tampered with,” she alleged.
Refuting the claims, ED sources claimed the agency will take “legal recourse” against the minister for levelling such allegations. They said the footage was recorded in video-only format during interrogation as the CCTV system did not have an audio recording facility at the time. Audio recordings were added to the video capturing system of the ED interrogation process only in October last year, the sources said.
The ED had earlier arrested retired Jal Board chief engineer Jagdish Kumar Arora and contractor Anil Kumar Aggarwal on January 31 and following the ED's assertion that further custodial interrogation was necessary to uncover a “larger conspiracy”, a special PMLA court extended their remand by five days on Monday.
