Delhi CM says he will appear before CBI in the excise policy case
New Delhi: A day after being summoned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the alleged Delhi excise policy scam case, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday claimed that courts are being lied to, people who have been arrested are being tortured and there isn’t a shred of evidence of any wrongdoing.
He claimed that central probe agencies like the CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) were going to extreme heights to target their strongest political rivals.
Referring to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia’s arrest and months of investigation, Kejriwal has said that these agencies have falsely claimed that 14 phones were destroyed, lying to the courts in affidavits, torturing suspects to extract falsified confessions and employing thuggish threats.
The agencies have not found a single penny of ill-gotten wealth that they claim was amassed from the so-called liquor scam, the Chief Minister said while talking about Sisodia’s
arrest.
“When they found nothing in raids, they said the money had been funnelled into our Goa election campaign. 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.
Kejriwal on Saturday said he will appear before the CBI in the excise policy case and asserted that if he was “corrupt” then no one in the world was “honest”.
Addressing a press conference here over the CBI summons to him in the excise policy case, he claimed that BJP leaders were demanding his arrest and that if the saffron party had “ordered” the probe agency to arrest him, it cannot refuse doing so.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has summoned the AAP leader in connection with the case on Sunday. He has been asked to be present at the agency headquarters at 11 am to answer queries of the investigating team, officials said.
The central probe agency has already arrested former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia in connection with the case.
It is alleged that the Delhi government’s excise policy for 2021-22 to grant licences to liquor traders favoured certain dealers who had allegedly paid bribes for it, a charge strongly refuted by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The policy was later scrapped.
Kejriwal also attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, levelling allegations of corruption against him.
“How can corruption be an issue for such a person who is submerged in corruption from head to toe,” he said and cited the charges levelled against Modi by former Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satyapal Malik.
“I want to say to Modiji, if Kejriwal is a thief or corrupt, then there isn’t a single honest man in this world,” he asserted.
Kejriwal said no party in the 75-year history of independent India had been targeted like the AAP because it has given hope to people which no other party has been able to do so far.
“The AAP has given hope to people that it can eradicate poverty, provide education and employment to their children. The prime minister wants to crush this hope,” he said.
In 30 years of the BJP rule in Gujarat, in which Modi was the chief minister for 12 years, the condition of not a single school could be improved, while the AAP government in Delhi turned around the government schools in five years, he said.
“A temporary classroom had to be set up when the prime minister visited a school in Gujarat…,” Kejriwal quipped.
He said the BJP was trying to corner the AAP and it first sent party’s “number 2 and number 3” (Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain) leaders behind the bars and now they wanted to catch hold of him.
“The issue is not corruption or liquor scam. How could it be for a person who himself is submerged in corruption? I had cited various instances of corruption in my speech at Delhi Assembly in March and I got a call from Sanjay Singh (party MP) that I was next,” said the AAP supremo.
Batting for the now scrapped Excise Policy 2021-22 of his government, Kejriwal said it could have ended corruption.
“The same policy has led to 50 per cent rise in revenue in the last one year,” he claimed.
Kejriwal alleged torture and threats to those arrested by the central agencies in connection with the liquor scam probe.