ED officials didn’t conduct searches, sat in living room of Kejriwal’s PA’s house: Atishi

PTI, Feb 7, 2024, 1:49 PM IST

The ED officials who raided the residence of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s personal assistant (PA) Bibhav Kumar sat in the living room of his house and did not even pretend to carry out any searches, Delhi minister Atishi said on Wednesday.

The officials did not search any rooms or look for any documents. They did not even care to explain in connection with which case they had come, she alleged at a press conference.

There was no immediate response from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to Atishi’s claims.

Sources had said on Tuesday that the raids were carried out in connection with ”irregularities” in a Delhi Jal Board (DJB) tendering process.

”It must have been the first time in the history of ED that such a raid took place,” Atishi said.

Yesterday, the ED, the ”favourite weapon” of the BJP-led central government, raided the house of the chief minister’s PA for 16 hours and the house of AAP treasurer and Rajya Sabha MP N D Gupta for 18 hours, she said.

”You will be surprised to hear that the ED officers who came for the raids did not carry out any searches. They did not find any papers or made any inquiries or file any paperwork to tell in connection with which case they had come,” she added.

The ‘panchnama’ document showed that the ED team took with it just two Gmail account downloads and three family phones from Kumar’s house, Atishi claimed.

The ED raids are nothing but an attack on Kejriwal to crush him because he is the only one who openly challenges the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she charged.

”Earlier, raids were carried out in the name of probing a case but now all those things have been done away with. Raids are being carried out without specifying the case,” she said.

About 10-12 premises in the national capital were covered by the ED on Tuesday as part of its probe into charges that the AAP and some officials received kickbacks of Rs 21 crore from a DJB contractor, official sources said.

The raids were carried out under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Besides Bibhav Kumar’s residence, the office of AAP treasurer N D Gupta, residences of former DJB member Shalabh Kumar, a chartered accountant (CA), Pankaj Mangal, and some others linked to the AAP were covered by the ED officials.