Centre trying to scare AAP leaders by conducting raids; ED coerced witnesses to give statement in excise policy case: Atishi

Delhi Minister and senior Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Atishi on February 6 said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Centre is trying to "scare and silence" the party by conducting ED raids on its leaders. She also accused the central agency of tampering with interrogation footage of statements, which she said were extracted by force and threat.

Ms. Atishi had announced a day before that she would doing an “explosive expose” on the agency today. “To stop this expose and to scare the AAP, from 7 a.m. today, ED started raids at multiple AAP leaders’ houses.” She was referring to the agency conducting searches at the residences of AAP treasurer N.D. Gupta’s house, and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s PA.

“The BJP-ruled central government is trying to threaten and scare the AAP. I want to tell Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP, and their CBI and ED that AAP is not going to be scared of your threats,” she added.

With regards to the excise policy case, Ms. Atishi stated that the ED has found no proof, and further that “all statements in the case are fake.”

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She alleged that many witnesses in the case have said that they were coerced to give the statement.

“One witness said that he was slapped and he suffered injury. Another witness said that he was threatened that his wife will be put in jail if he doesn’t give a statement against AAP leaders. Again and again, people were threatened [by the ED] to sign false statements.”

She went on to cite a 2020 Supreme Court order which instructed investigative agencies to record audio and video footage of the interrogation being conducted. Ms. Atishi said that one of the accused in the excise policy case had submitted an application in the court asking for the CCTV footage. However, the ED in return submitted the footage without the audio.

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“AAP knows through reliable sources that the ED has deleted audio of all the footage of the investigation of the case in the past one and a half years.”

“This shows that all the statements are fake. If the statements are not fake, then why do they delete it? Who is the ED trying to save by deleting the audio of the footage? I’m challenging the ED to keep all audio recordings of the footages of the investigation before the nation,” Ms. Atishi added.

(With PTI inputs)