Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia has accused the Centre of “hatching a conspiracy” to arrest Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Health Minister Satyendar Jain and him by “misusing” probe agencies.
The allegation comes a day after former Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar’s letter to the Chief Secretary, seeking voluntary retirement and alleging that CBI officers were pressuring him to implicate the Chief Minister, emerged.
‘Destroying AAP govt’
The 1989-batch IAS officer, against whom the CBI had filed a charge sheet for alleged criminal conspiracy, cheating and forgery along with eight others last month, said that the “same set of people who forced bureaucrat B.K. Bansal and his son to commit suicide” were now harassing him.
Mr. Sisodia also alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre was “hell-bent on destroying” the elected AAP Delhi government, besides adding that the five poll-bound States of Punjab, Goa, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand would “teach the saffron party a lesson”.
According to Mr. Sisodia, the Centre has unleashed all government agencies to destroy the AAP and silence Mr. Kejriwal. “They are ready to register fake cases against him and his officers and arrest them.”
Kejriwal tweets
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal reacted to this with a tweet: “CBI raids my office, pressurises officer to implicate me. CBI raids Satyendar Jain’s office. Why are u so scared of us Modi Ji? Chill [sic].”
A day earlier, Mr. Kumar in his letter had said, “During interrogation, I was repeatedly told that I would be freed if I implicated Arvind Kejriwal. Maybe this was the reason behind the agency going to such lengths. Not only this, the CBI, just to force people to implicate me and the Chief Minister, has beaten up dozens of people and some of them sustained permanent major injuries.”
“These facts are common knowledge in the government, but nobody has the courage to question it,” Mr. Kumar added. In his letter, he also said that he had never experienced such utter “disregard” for the system, process, protocol, transparency and decency.”
“It is the same set of people in the CBI who forced Bansal and his son to commit suicide. As everyone knows, his wife and daughter had committed suicide earlier due to atrocities and humiliation at the hands of the CBI’s Anti-Corruption Bureau, which investigated the case against me. Bansal and his family were murdered by these people,” the IAS officer has alleged.
‘Compete with policies’
Referring to Mr. Kumar’s letter, Mr. Sisodia claimed that his case was an indication that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah were “afraid” of the AAP government in the Capital.
“Do not compete with us with conspiracies, instead of policies. You [the Centre] and us should go for a constructive competition and let’s see who wins,” the Deputy Chief Minister said at a press conference.
