As CBI chargesheet makes no mention of Manish Sisodia, Kejriwal and his deputy double down on BJP; seek PM's apology

With Manish Sisodia’s name missing from the first chargesheet filed by the CBI in the Delhi Excise policy scam case, the Delhi Deputy Chief Minister on Friday slammed the BJP and said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi “should stop hatching conspiracies against the elected government”. 

The CBI on Friday filed its first chargesheet in the case against arrested businessmen Vijay Nair and Abhishek Boinpally and five more accused, keeping the probe open into the alleged role of others named in the FIR including Sisodia. The Delhi Deputy CM, named in the CBI FIR, does not figure in this charge sheet.

“Few months ago, the BJP came up with a fairy tale, alleging a massive scam in Delhi. Sometimes they claimed the scam to be of Rs 10,000 crore, sometimes they said it was of Rs 500 crore, then they said it was of Rs 900 crore. They made the CBI raid by house, search by bank lockers. I had already stated that no such scam took place in Delhi, but the BJP was trying to portray it as the biggest scam in history. They defamed us, tortured us. In the end, it emerged today in the CBI chargesheet that Manish Sisodia was falsely framed into this, no such scam took place at all,” Sisodia told reporters. 

“I want to tell the BJP that the fake reports, which they made through their LG Vinai Saxena and their Chief Secretary, to defame the elected government of Delhi, now will they take action against they LG and Chief Secretary? Not that it has been proven that the CBI, who deployed its 800 officers and raided 500 places, said that there is nothing against Manish Sisodia, he has been given a clean chit, shouldn’t the Lieutenant Governor and the Chief Secretary be removed? And the prime minister, who is always busy misusing the CBI and ED to defame the elected governments, should apologise,” he added. 

Addressing the Media on an Important Issue | LIVE https://t.co/4PjYSCCk7k

— Manish Sisodia (@msisodia) November 25, 2022

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal too, took the opportunity to back his deputy once more. “Manish’s name is not in the CBI chargesheet. The whole case is fake. Nothing was found in the raid. 800 officers found nothing in their investigation for 4 months. Manish gave hope of a good future to crores of poor children of the country through an education revolution. I am sad that a conspiracy was hatched to defame such a person by implicating him in a false case,” he tweeted.

Besides Sisodia, who holds the excise portfolio in the Delhi government, the CBI had named the then excise commissioner Arava Gopi Krishna, the then deputy excise commissioner Anand Kumar Tiwari, assistant excise commissioner Pankaj Bhatnagar, nine businessmen and two companies as accused in the FIR filed on August 17.

In its FIR, the agency has alleged that Sisodia and other accused public servants recommended and took decisions pertaining to the Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22 without the approval of competent authority with "an intention to extend undue favours to the licensees post tender".

The agency has alleged Amit Arora, Director of Buddy Retail Pvt Limited in Gurugram, Dinesh Arora and Arjun Pandey are "close associates" of Sisodia and were "actively involved in managing and diverting the undue pecuniary advantage collected from liquor licensees" for the accused public servants.

The CBI has alleged that Radha Industries managed by Dinesh Arora received Rs 1 crore from Sameer Mahendru of Indospirits.