PROMINENT INDIAN OPPOSITION LEADER ARVIND KEJRIWAL ARRESTED OVER CORRUPTION CLAIMS

Fri 22 March 2024:

India’s financial crime bureau has detained Delhi Chief Minister and well-known opposition leader Arvind Kejriwal in relation to corruption claims involving the city’s liquor policy, his party has said.

After two of Arvind Kejriwal’s deputies were arrested in the same case last year, which the party has referred to as “dirty politics,” Kejriwal’s arrest on Thursday means that the party’s key figures are now behind bars. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been around for ten years.

Atishi Singh, Delhi’s finance minister, rejected the allegations and said that the AAP was seeking to quash the latest arrest.

“We have asked for an urgent hearing by the Supreme Court tonight itself,” she said.

Kejriwal will continue to be Delhi’s chief minister while the party fights the accusations, Singh said.

She described his arrest as a “political conspiracy” orchestrated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The financial crime agency, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), is investigating allegations that a liquor policy implemented by the Delhi government in 2022, which ended its control over the sale of liquor in the capital, gave undue advantages to private retailers.

Kejriwal’s administration’s controversial policy ended a government monopoly on the sale of liquor.

The policy has since been withdrawn.

The AAP has said no evidence of wrongdoing has emerged in the investigation and Kejriwal has previously said that if he is corrupt, “then there is no one in this world who is honest”.

He will be presented before a court on Friday where the charges against him will be made public, local media reported.

The ED had issued nine summons to Kejriwal for questioning but he did not answer them, saying that he feared he would be arrested.

He also sought protection from arrest from court, saying his party would be weakened in elections if that were to happen.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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