Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday accused the Central Bureau Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate of filing false affidavits against his former deputy Manish Sisodia.
“We will file appropriate cases against CBI and ED officials for perjury and producing false evidence in courts,” the chief minister said in a tweet.
The Aam Aadmi Party chief alleged that the central agencies were torturing several people to testify against Sisodia.
The development comes a day after Kejriwal was summoned by the CBI in a case related to alleged irregularities in the national capital’s now-scrapped liquor policy.
Commenting on the summons, the chief minister said on Saturday: “If Kejriwal is corrupt, then there is no honest person in the world. But corruption is not the issue at all...The prime minister is covered in corruption from head to toe, so how can corruption be an issue for him?”
The Aam Aadmi Party said that the chief minister will appear before the agency on April 16. It also alleged that the CBI summoned Kejriwal as he spoke about the links between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and industrialist Gautam Adani in the Delhi Assembly.
The case pertains to the Delhi government’s excise policy that came into effect in November 2021. Under it, licences of 849 liquor shops were issued to private firms through open bidding. Earlier, four government corporations ran 475 liquor stores and the remaining 389 were private shops.
The Central Bureau of Investigation had arrested Sisodia on February 26 in the same alleged scam.
Kejriwal had said that Sisodia was innocent and the CBI’s action against him was part of the “dirty politics” of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Central government.
On Saturday, the Delhi chief minister said that the ED in its chargesheet has accused Sisodia of destroying 14 mobile phones.
“Of these, four mobile phones are with the ED and one is with the CBI,” Kejriwal claimed. “The rest of the mobile phones are active, they are being used by people.”
The chief minister added that despite months of investigation, the agencies have failed to procure any money related to the alleged liquor scam.
“When they found nothing in raids, they said the money had been funnelled into our Goa election campaign,” he said. “Where is the proof of this? All our payments were made with cheques. Show me a single rupee of the Rs 100 crore you claim we got.”
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