Following the arrest of MLA Amanatullah Khan by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) in an alleged money laundering case, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) called it part of an alleged conspiracy.
Addressing a press conference here, AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj claimed that Khan’s arrest was a part of the BJP’s strategy to keep an elected legislator away from his assembly just before the elections.
The minister also termed the action an attempt to disrupt government work in the national capital and said the searches conducted by the ED are related to the eight-year-old case, pointing out that previous probes by the ACB and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had yielded no significant findings in the matter.
According to Bharadwaj, despite the investigation by the ACB since 2016, nothing came out of it.
Earlier also, he said that the ACB made the arrest, but Khan was granted bail in the matter, and after that case was again sent to the CBI, which investigated it, questioned, summoned, and filed a chargesheet in this regard, however, it was clear that there was no money transaction, no corruption took place, no monetary benefit was taken in lieu of a job, he claimed.
The AAP minister accused the BJP of misusing the probe agencies and such actions are likely to increase as Delhi assembly polls draw closer.
Meanwhile, AAP chief spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar alleged that the case is fake as the appointments made in the Waqf board did not have any irregularities, and the salaries given in this regard were termed as scams.
Taking a dig at the BJP, claiming that the saffron party is scared of the AAP and Arvind Kejriwal, Kakkar alleged that it has in the past also made attempts to somehow declare AAP leaders as dishonest.
After Khan’s arrest, the party’s Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh went to the Okhla MLA’s house and met the family, assuring them that the whole party was with them.
Singh strongly condemned Khan’s arrest in this way and added this was going to cost the BJP, and it would lose badly in Delhi, and claimed that the AAP leader had been arrested without any evidence, while he had also asked for a few days’ time from ED as his mother-in-law had undergone cancer surgery.