New Delhi: Delhi Minister of Education Atishi Marlena, on Tuesday dubbed the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) raids on several Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders as an attempt to stop her from disclosing the “explosive exposé”, which she had announced the previous day.
Atishi asserted that the BJP-led central government is attempting to intimidate and muzzle the Arvind Kejriwal-led party through raids on its leaders. This followed the central agency’s searches at residences of MP ND Gupta and Arvind Kejriwal’s personal secretary, Bibhav Kumar, in connection with a money laundering case, involving alleged misappropriation of funds in Delhi Jal Board.
Besides Gupta and Bibhav, former Delhi Jal Board member Shalabh Kumar was also subjected to the raids.
Calling the ED probe a “scam”, Atishi alleged that majority of the statements collected against AAP leaders in the Delhi excise policy case had been done through intimidation. She also accused the agency of changing the statement of an unnamed accused and deleting witness statement audio recordings over 1.5 years.
“…an accused, a few days ago, submitted an application in the court seeking CCTV footage of his statement. The accused applied because the ED had put him face to face with a government witness in the case where questions were asked and statements were made by the accused and the government witness. It was all covered under CCTV. The accused saw that the written statement that the ED submitted in the court was different from the discussions held in the room,” she told a presser.
She said that when the accused sought the CCTV footage, the ED submitted only the video footage with no audio recording of the discussion. “All the evidence covering the discussions held in the room was deleted,” she said while further claiming that all audio recordings of the ED interrogations have been deleted.
While acknowledging that the raids may persist, Atishi emphasised that AAP remains undeterred by fear. “We have filed a petition in at the ED and CBI special court seeking audio and videos of the interrogations it has conducted in the last 1.5 years. If ED fails to submit the audio recordings before the court, then it is clear that there is no recovery… no evidence of what the witnesses have said is available,” she said.
The agency is yet to respond to these allegations.
As part of the ED raids, as many as 12 locations in the national capital are currently under scrutiny.
