A day after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials carried out large-scale searches at the residence of a former minister of the Delhi state government and also a senior Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader, Saurabh Bharadwaj, the latter lashed back at the central investigation agency, accusing it of a political conspiracy against him. Bharadwaj complained that Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena had conspired with the ED to frame him in a bogus case.
During a press conference held on Wednesday, Bharadwaj gave an account of the raid by the ED in which he mentioned that a printer was put in front of him as a symbol of protest. He said that searches started at 7:15 am at his residence and were conducted simultaneously at 13 places in Delhi, including places of the private contractors. These raids are associated with a probe made against alleged irregularities in health infrastructure facilities approved by the AAP government in the period 2018-2019.
As per authorities, the investigation is exploring alleged corruption, miscalculated building, overpraisal and misutilization of funds undertaken in projects that were designed to reinforce the healthcare infrastructure of the city of Delhi. But Bharadwaj claimed he had no wrongdoings, and the questioning by the ED was meant to intimidate him.
“There were 43 questions that they had given a list, so I answered with the honesty I could. However, when I did not agree to rework my statement, my family was misled, such that it could have been impacted by an arrest,” Bharadwaj said. He also claimed that the ED had manipulated part of his statement so as to weave an untrue case against him.
Bharadwaj claimed this was not the only attack against him, but against the whole AAP government before the elections. Rejecting what he described as these pressure accessories, he added that the party would not kowtow to such pressure methods, and it would remain to expose misuse of central agencies to pursue political vendetta.
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