Hours after the Supreme Court turned down the bail petition of his former deputy and close confidant Manish Sisodia, the Enforcement Directorate summoned Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to appear before it on November 2 in connection with the ongoing probe into the alleged liquor scam.
This follows the ED’s submission to the SC earlier this month that it intended to investigate AAP as a beneficiary of the bribes, the “proceeds of crime” in ED’s parlance, in the case. The ED had made the submission in response to a question by the court as to why it had not made AAP an accused in the case despite alleging that the bribes earned from allegedly favouring a cartel of liquor dealers were used to fund the Kejriwal-led party’s election campaign in Goa.
But grounds for Kejriwal’s questioning appeared to be getting readied soon after the agency grilled his personal assistant Bibhav Kumar and Jasmine Shah, another close aide who headed the Delhi Dialogue Commission, in February, around the same time Sisodia was taken into custody. Vijay Nair, AAP’s communications chief who was among the first to be arrested in connection with the liquor scam, is also known to be very close to the Delhi CM. The ED brought on record Kejriwal’s involvement in the excise policy scam in multiple chargesheets filed by it.