CBI raids Delhi chief minister’s office, sparks outcry.
By Dileep Thekkethil
The anti-corruption crusader and the chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, has termed prime minister Narendra Modi as a ‘coward’ and a ‘psychopath’ after the CBI raided Kejriwal’s office allegedly in connection with a corruption case involving principal secretary Rajendra Kumar.
Kejriwal, earlier during the day, said: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi, I am not scared of you. You don’t know what I’m made of. Tomorrow, if my own son is found guilty of corruption, I will send him to jail as well.”
The Central Bureau of Investigation said that they raided the secretariat and 13 other locations in connection with a corruption case involving Kejriwal’s principal secretary Kumar.
Kumar is accused of abusing his official stature by showing nepotism in offering government contracts to a private firm over seven years along with other six others, said bureau spokeswoman Devpreet Singh.
Speaking to media later during the day, Kejriwal said, “CBI’s clarification is a lie. They should have raided the education department and other places where documents related to charges against Kumar are, not the CM’s office. The CM’s office only has filed from the past 15 days. If they were looking for files of the 2007-14 period, what were they looking for in my office?”
He also added that the CBI officials were searching for the files of Delhi and District Cricket Association, which allegedly has the name of Arun Jaitley.
“They wanted the file of DDCA… Jaitley figures in it. They came looking for that file,” Kejriwal told reporters outside the residence of deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia. The members of AAP had earlier convened a meeting in Sisodia’s residence to discuss the issue.
The Delhi government had earlier constituted a three-member committee for inquiring the allegations of corruption in state cricket association.
“Rajender Kumar is just an excuse, I am the real target,” Kejriwal said.
Even as many AAP members and other party supporters echoed the reaction of Kejriwal, the BJP reprimanded the kind of language used by Kejriwal to attack the Prime Minister and also accused him of giving protection to tainted bureaucrats.
“CBI raids my office. When Modi couldn’t handle me politically, he resorted to this cowardice. Modi is a coward and a psychopath,” the CM tweeted as several party leaders called the incident shamefully.
Modi is a coward and a psycopath
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) December 15, 2015
Hours later, agency officials refuted Kejriwal’s charges, saying investigators raided the office of senior bureaucrat and CM’s secretary Rajender Kumar for allegedly favoring private firms in state tenders. Raids were also conducted at other places in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, sources added.
A senior AAP member said during a discussion that the incident that unfolded today at the office of the Delhi chief minister was the most inappropriate reaction of Modi to the rally that AAP conducted in Gujarat a few days back, which was attended by more than 25,000, including the estranged Patels.
“FM lied in Parliament. My own office files are being looked into to get some evidence against me. Rajender is an excuse,” Kejriwal tweeted.
“I am the only CM who dismissed, on my own, a minister n a senior officer on charges of corruption and handed their cases to CBI,” Kejriwal wrote on Twitter, referring the dismissal of the environment and food and supplies minister Asim Ahmed Khan in September over a graft case of Rs. 6 lakh.
“Modi is trying to stop honest politics by using CBI raids as a scare. But he won’t succeed as the public is with the truth,” Sisodia tweeted.
“Sealing of a chief minister’s office is unprecedented. I am shocked,” West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted.
Also to be noted is that the raid in Kejriwal’s office comes a day after the railway ministry demolished a slum in outer Delhi’s Shakur Basti area, leaving hundreds of people homeless in shivering cold.
Earlier, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi were asked by a court to appear before it on the National Herald funds misuse case, in which Sonia and Rahul are accused of illegal land and property dealings. The Congress has stalled Parliament alleging the case as vendetta by the BJP.