Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Raghav Chadha on Friday claimed that the central probe agencies only have "malicious and fabricated stories" against former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who has been arrested in a money laundering case related to the Delhi excise policy, and have been asking him the same questions.
Addressing a press conference, Chadha claimed that the CBI and the ED don’t have any evidence against Sisodia and he is behind bars as a result of BJP’s "politics of revenge".
"The BJP is scared of AAP and has started politics of revenge. CBI and ED don’t have any evidence against Manish Sisodia. They only have concocted stories against him. When court said that CBI took Sisodia in remand, interrogated him and did not find anything against him, they got ED to frame more false cases against him," he alleged.
He also said that ED officers have questioned Sisodia for only 15 hours during his 7-day remand. The court has not found Sisodia guilty, but the ED and BJP has kept him behind the bars to interrogate him, Chadha added.
"The central agencies don’t have any evidence against Manish Sisodia. They only have malicious and fabricated stories against him. The CBI and the ED asked same questions to Sisodia during his interrogation and purpose of doing this was to keep Sisodia behind the bars," he added.
"Since 2014 to 2022, the ED has registered 3,555 cases in eight years, but the court sentenced only 23 people in total," he said, adding that the BJP and ED has only one aim, "to file a fake case and keep the AAP leader Sisodia in Jail."
"ED made Manish ji face 3 people in 7 days, Today, to confront the same 3 people, ED has again sought 7 days custody from the court. ED has made a joke. BJP just wants to keep them in jail in false cases on one pretext or the other," Chadha added.
The ED arrested Sisodia on March 9 in Tihar jail, where he was lodged in connection with a Central Bureau of Investigation case pertaining to alleged corruption in the formulation and implementation of the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy for 2021-22.
The CBI arrested Sisodia on February 26.
On Friday, a Delhi court extended Sisodia’s ED custody for another five days, after the Enforcement Directorate sought his custody for seven more days.
The ED told the court that crucial information had come up during Sisodia’s custody and he had to be confronted with other accused persons. It said data from his email and mobile phone is also being forensically analysed.
With inputs from agencies.
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