Kejriwal says ED raids meant to trample AAP as nothing found

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday claimed that 23 Enforcement Directorate (ED) officers carried out raids at his personal assistant’s residence for 16 hours but did not find anything.

He also claimed that the houses of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders such as Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain and Sanjay Singh were raided as well. But even there, the ED did not find anything, the national convener of the party said. These are being done to trample the AAP and trouble its members, Kejriwal said in a post on ‘X’.

The ED on Tuesday searched the premises of Kejriwal’s personal assistant (PA) Bibhav Kumar and others as part of its probe into charges that the AAP and some officials received kickbacks of about Rs 21 crore through alleged irregularities in a Delhi Jal Board (DJB) contract, official sources said. The action 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 AAP, they said.

“Today my PA’s house was raided by 23 ED officers for 16 hours. After a thorough investigation, they found nothing. Not a single penny was found, no jewelery or any property of any kind, no papers,” Kejriwal said in the post on ‘X’ in Hindi.

He claimed that the probe agency had also carried out raids at the homes of AAP leaders Sisodia, Singh and Jain but nothing was found.

The chief minister asked whether the ED can enter anyone’s house without any reason. “Is this not sheer hooliganism? It is clear that all these raids and arrests are being done only out of political malice, to harass us, to crush the Aam Aadmi Party. It’s been two years since they started investigating. Not a single new penny or any evidence has been found,” he said. The country is run by law and the Constitution, “it is not anyone’s inheritance”, Kejriwal said.

“This country has 140 crore people. People will never tolerate this kind of hooliganism,” he said. A dozen premises in the national capital were searched by ED officials from 7 am under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The residences of Bibhav Kumar, former DJB member Shalabh Kumar, the office of party Rajya Sabha member and national treasurer N D Gupta, and the premises of chartered accountant Pankaj Mangal and others associated with the ruling party in Delhi were covered in the search action.

With inputs from News18