As Arvind Kejriwal, AAP MLAs, and MPs prepare to march to the BJP headquarters in Delhi to protest against the arrest of CM’s aide Bibhav Kumar in an assault case, Swati Maliwal, an Aam Aadmi Party Rajya Sabha MP, criticized the party on Sunday, saying it was out on the streets to “save the accused.”
Bibhav Kumar was picked up at the CM’s residence and arrested in connection with the assault case on Saturday. He was later sent to a five-day police custody by Delhi’s Tis Hazari Court.
“There was a time when we all came out on the streets to get justice for Nirbhaya. Today, after 12 years, we are out on the streets to save the accused who made the CCTV footage disappear and formatted the phone?” Swati Maliwal wrote in a post on X (formally Twitter) in Hindi.
किसी दौर में हम सब निर्भया को इंसाफ़ दिलाने के लिए सड़क पर निकलते थे, आज 12 साल बाद सड़क पर निकले हैं ऐसे आरोपी को बचाने के लिए जिसने CCTV फुटेज ग़ायब किए और Phone format किया?
काश इतना ज़ोर मनीष सिसोदिया जी के लिए लगाया होता। वो यहाँ होते तो शायद मेरे साथ इतना बुरा नहीं होता! pic.twitter.com/kXAAMLgPcg
— Swati Maliwal (@SwatiJaiHind) May 19, 2024
“I wish we had made such as an effort for Manish Sisodia ji. If he had been here, maybe this wouldn’t have happened to me!” Swati Maliwal, who has alleged that Bibhav Kumar slapped her seven-eight times, “kicked on the chest, stomach and pelvis area”, said.
The AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal announced on Saturday that he and other politicians would visit the BJP headquarters on May 19 “so that the prime minister can send anyone he wishes to jail”.
Hours after his aide Bibhav Kumar was arrested in connection with the alleged assault on his party’s parliamentarian Swati Maliwal, he claimed at a press briefing that the BJP is saying they will send AAP MP Raghav Chadha, who had just returned from the UK, and Delhi ministers Atishi and Saurabh Bharadwaj to jail too.
On Saturday night, Swati Maliwal said that modified films were being disseminated and that the CCTV evidence of the incident on May 13—when she was reportedly beaten at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s residence—had “disappeared.”
“Bibhav gave me a severe beating at first. He kicked and slapped me. He went outside, contacted security, and began filming as soon as I got free and dialed 112. “I was yelling and telling the security that Bibhav had given me a brutal beating,” asserted Maliwal.
“The lengthy section of the film has been altered. It was only after I got tired of notifying the security that a 50-second video was made public.
“Now that the phone has been formatted, the entire video has been removed? The CCTV footage has vanished as well.
This is the height of conspiracy,” she said in a post on X in Hindi.