After Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ministers claimed, citing unidentified inputs, that the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) is likely to arrest the AAP convener today, security was stepped up outside Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s home on Thursday morning. These accusations follow the Delhi Chief Minister’s failure to appear for his third summons from the ED on Wednesday. On December 22, 2018, the Enforcement Department (ED) sent CM Kejriwal a third summons in relation to the Delhi liquor scam case, requesting that he appear before the agency on January 3.
Taking to the social media platform X, AAP leader and Delhi’s Law and PWD Minister, Atishi on Wednesday, said, “News coming in that ED is going to raid@ArvindKejriwal’s residence tomorrow morning. Arrest likely.”
Minutes after Atishi’s post, Delhi Health Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj also posted on X, claiming speculations about Kejriwal’s arrest by the ED.
“It is heard that tomorrow morning, ED is going to reach the house of Chief Minister Kejriwal and arrest him,” Bharadwaj said in his post.
Kejriwal, in his reply to the ED, expressed his readiness to cooperate with the investigation but declined to appear on the summoned date, calling the notice “illegal.” Kejriwal further questioned agency for not responding to his earlier replies when the summons was sent to him and he had raised certain queries on the nature of the agency’s investigation.
In his written reply to the ED the Delhi CM said “As a premier investigating agency the non-disclosure and non-response approach adopted by you cannot sustain the test of law, equity or justice. Your obstinacy tantamount to assuming the role of judge, jury and executioner at the same time which is not acceptable in our country governed by the rule of law.”