The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday carried out searches at the premises of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s personal secretary Bibhav Kumar, AAP treasurer and Rajya Sabha MP ND Gupta, former Delhi Jal Board member Shalabh Kumar and a few others in a case of money laundering.
Overall, about 10 premises in the national capital region are being searched by teams of the ED which coincidentally comes at a time when Delhi Minister Atishi announced on Monday on a social media platform that she will come up with an “explosive expose” on the agency. “I will be doing an explosive expose on ED at 10 am tomorrow! Watch this space #BigEDExposebyAAP,” Atishi wrote on X. Her Cabinet colleague, Saurabh Bharadwaj, followed it by posting on the same online platform, “Big expose on BJP’s Extortion Department (ED)“.
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Confirming the raids, Atishi repeated charges made earlier on several occasions that the BJP wants to suppress AAP through central agencies but, she said, I want to tell them that we will not be afraid of it.
“For the last 2 years, AAP leaders are being threatened. In the name of this so-called liquor scam, someone’s house is raided, someone gets summons and someone is arrested...Even after hundreds of raids in two years, ED has not been able to recover even a single rupee. Even after two years, ED has not found any concrete evidence and the court has also repeatedly asked that evidence should be presented,” she told the media.
Paralley, the ED has moved a Special judge in a Rouse Avenue Court against Kejriwal’s non-cooperation in the Delhi excise case, given that the Delhi Chief Minister did not appear before the ED despite it having issued five summons against him. On hearing ED’s application on Saturday, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Divya Malhotra fixed the matter for Wednesday to conclude the remaining submissions of the parties on a fresh complaint filed by the anti-money laundering agency.