AAP won’t bow down, will stay strong: Kejriwal after visiting MLA Amanatullah Khan

A day after the Enforcement Directorate raided AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan’s home, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called on him and said the searches and cases against the AAP leaders were part of ‘Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attempts to destroy’ the party.

‘ED conducted a raid at Amanatullah Khan’s home yesterday. This is not the first time PM Modi-ji has got AAP MLAs’ houses raided. Ever since our government has formed, PM Modi-ji has tried to destroy the AAP and its leaders,’ Kejriwal said Wednesday.

After the AAP formed its governments in 2015 and in 2016, the Shunglu committee was formed and it went through 400-450files but could not find corruption of a single penny, Kejriwal said.

‘After that Modi-ji started targeting our MLAs by filing false and fake cases against them. They have so far filed 170 cases against our MLAs and judgments have come in more than 140 cases. All these judgments are against Modi-ji. All the judgments were in our favour… As they failed, they started targeting and arresting our senior leaders,’ he added.

‘They arrested Satyendar Jain, Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh and conducted raids at Amanatullah Khan’s house yesterday. I don’t want to say much as the case is in court but if you had heard the last hearing… The court kept asking the ED to give some evidence, but they had nothing to show. It clearly shows these are fake cases,’ the CM said.

Further attacking Modi, Kejriwal said, ‘They keep saying Kejriwal has done corruption over buses, roads and electricity…. Do you think Modi-ji would have spared me if he had proof? They have nothing. All these are just fake and fabricated cases and investigations. Their agenda is not to end corruption but to destroy the Opposition. They have inducted all the corrupt leaders into their party.’

‘Modi-ji has become very arrogant…You can see the arrogance in his behaviour-the way he talks, walks and in his personality. He does not consider a person as a human. How will the country progress if its king is arrogant? If the king starts taking revenge on ordinary people, then the country will not progress… Amanatullah Khan se badla utar rahe hai, Amanatullah ki kya aukaat hai… Aise desh tarakki nahi karega…,’ he said.

Kerjiwal said, ‘The atmosphere in the country is not good. People are leaving the country in large numbers… There is inflation. But the AAP is a party of nationalist and patriotic leaders and it is not going to bow down. It will stay steady and strong…’

For his part, Khan said the ED officials had created trouble for his sick mother. ‘ED officials searched my house for 12 hours and found nothing… Earlier, the ACB conducted raids and found nothing. Today also they found nothing. They just created trouble for my family and my mother, who is sick. They seized my phone and gave a receipt for it,’ the MLA said.

According to ED officials, searches are going on in several places under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. An FIR on complaints regarding alleged illegal appointments, rule violations and fund misappropriation in the Delhi Waqf Board was registered against Khan by in 2020. The ED has taken suo motu cognisance of the ACB’s FIR.

The ACB reports to Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena. Former ACB chief S K Gautam had written to the lieutenant governor’s secretariat asking that Khan be removed as the waqf board’s chairperson because he was ‘obstructing free and fair investigation and preventing witnesses from coming out against him’.