In a first, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been summoned as a Delhi court on Tuesday took cognizance of the seventh and eighth supplementary chargesheets filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the money laundering case linked to the alleged excise policy scam. In response to the chargesheet, the AAP said that the central agency was “functioning as a political wing of the BJP”. Not a single rupee was recovered from any AAP leader in the case despite two years of investigation and over “500 raids”, the party further claimed, adding that the central agencies were deployed to “ensure the AAP is finished”.
The AAP and Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal are named in the seventh supplementary chargesheet. The eighth supplementary chargesheet names Vinod Chauhan and his associate Ashish Mathur as accused. As per the ED, Chauhan was allegedly involved in the transfer of Rs 25.5 crore to the AAP for the Goa Assembly polls campaign in 2021-2022.
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Special Judge Kaveri Baweja issued summons to the accused to appear before the Rouse Avenue Court on July 12. Chauhan and Kejriwal are already in judicial custody.
Kejriwal was arrested by the ED on March 21 in the money laundering case. He was granted interim bail until June 1 by the Supreme Court for poll campaigning after which he surrendered before Tihar Jail. Later on June 20, he was granted bail by Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Court. But then, the ED challenged the bail in the High Court. The HC stayed the trial court order granting bail to Kejriwal.
On June 26, the Chief Minister was formally arrested by the CBI.
The ED had earlier alleged that Kejriwal was “directly involved in the formulation” of the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy, which was drafted “considering the favours to be granted to the ‘South Group’.
The ED claims the ‘South Group’ “secured uninhibited access, undue favours, attained stakes in established wholesale businesses, and multiple retail zones (over and above what was allowed in the policy)”, and paid Rs 100 crore to AAP leaders in return.
“Chauhan had transferred money through the hawala route for AAP’s Goa elections. He was in regular touch with members of the ‘South Group’… was part of a deep nexus with major conspirators such as K Kavitha and certain AAP leaders,” ED’s Special Counsel Zoheb Hossain had earlier told a Delhi Court.
In response to the ED’s chargesheet against Kejriwal, the AAP in an official statement said, “The ED’s intention from the very beginning of this fake investigation was to frame AAP, arrest all its top leaders and crush the party. The BJP sees the AAP as the biggest threat in the future and has deployed ED and CBI to ensure AAP is finished.”
The party also said that the ED was solely relying on the statements given by other co-accused.
All the statements that led to the arrest of Kejriwal by the ED were given in July last year, the party further said, highlighting the eight-month gap.
