The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has issued summons to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for the eighth time for questioning in the excise policy-linked money laundering case. Kejriwal, the national convener of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), has now been asked to depose at the agency’s headquarters here on March 4, they said.
Kejriwal on Monday skipped the seventh summons issued to him in the case, saying he would appear before the agency if a court ordered him to do so. A city court, approached by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) over Kejriwal skipping its summonses, has listed this matter for further hearing on March 16.
The ED, while issuing the eighth summons, rejected the contention that a fresh notice for Kejriwal’s attendance was wrong as the matter was sub-judice. The agency believes that the local court has prima facie held Kejriwal guilty of “disobeying” the earlier notices issued to him in this case, warranting the eighth summons.
BJP leader Manoj Tiwari on Tuesday reacted to the summons issued to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal under the excise policy case,saying that he was surprised as to why the Enforcement Directorate was giving so many chances to the AAP national convener.
‘If someone is questioned in a case, and the one who is accused thinks that they cannot give answers, it proves that they are guilty and is accepting it,’ Tiwari said.
Kejriwal’s name has been mentioned multiple times in the charge sheets filed by the ED in the case.
Kejriwal and his party have alleged that the summonses issued by the ED were “illegal”. “They want us to break the alliance. Their message basically is that we should quit the alliance,” he said, claiming there were informal messages to that effect from different quarters.
AAP leaders Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh apart from communications in-charge of the party Vijay Nair have been arrested in this case by the ED till now.
The ED had claimed in its charge sheet that the AAP used “proceeds of crime” to the tune of about Rs 45 crore in its Goa election campaign.
The agency is also expected to file a fresh supplementary charge sheet in the case and may name the AAP as a “beneficiary” of the alleged kickbacks that were generated through the excise policy.
