Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's aide, Bibhav Kumar, is being taken to Mumbai by Delhi Police for investigation in connection with the Swati Maliwal assault case.
Delhi Police had earlier mentioned in the Tis Hazari Court that they would take Kumar to Mumbai to the place where he had allegedly formatted his phone. The police said that this sequence of crime recreation is important to understand whether the alleged formatting was done to destroy crucial evidence from Kumar's phone.
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Kumar's custody with the Delhi Police will expire on Thursday. Based on their findings, the Delhi Police will either seek more time in remand or invoke Section 201 in the matter, police sources said. Section 201 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) penalizes people for the destruction of evidence of a crime.
Meanwhile, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) has been formed to investigate the Swati Maliwal case. The SIT is headed by North Delhi's Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Anjitha Chepyala, who has been handling the investigation. Three inspector-rank officers are also included in the SIT, which includes the officer of the Civil Lines Police Station where the case was registered.
This comes a week after the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Rajya Sabha MP accused party chief Arvind Kejriwal’s former personal secretary, Bibhav Kumar, of assaulting her at the Chief Minister’s residence. Earlier on Monday, the Delhi Police took Bibhav Kumar to the drawing room of Kejriwal’s residence on Monday, where Kumar had allegedly assaulted Maliwal, to find out details about the sequence of events that took place on the morning of May 13.
The police noted down the answers to all their questions sequence-wise, mapped them and took photographs of the crime scene where the hour-long crime took place, officials said. Bibhav Kumar lodged a counter-complaint with the police on Friday, accusing Maliwal of gaining ‘unauthorised entry’ into the CM’s Civil Lines residence and ‘verbally abusing’ him.