The Enforcement Directorate carried out second searches on Friday at around 35 premises in the national capital, Punjab and Hyderabad to gather more money laundering evidence in the now scrapped Delhi excise policy case.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal dubbed latest raids as "dirty politics" and claimed the action of the agencies have not yielded anything against his deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia who is one of the prime accused in the case where the ED has charged that excise policy was tweaked to favour a liquor cartel and for pecuniary benefits. "Over 500 raids, more than 300 officials have been working round the clock for three months to find evidence against Manish Sisodia. Nothing has been found because he has not done anything," Kejriwal tweeted in Hindi. He also posted that "Time of so many officers is being wasted for one's dirty politics. How will the country progress like this?".
Fresh information
The raids, that started in the morning are going on at the premises of suspected liquor distributors, private firms and other associated entities after the sleuths got fresh information from the interrogation of owner of liquor manufacturing company Indospirit, Sameer Mahendru who was recently arrested by the ED.
The ED had carried out country-wide seraches on September 6 at about 45 locations after taking over the case from the CBI to probe proceeds of crime committed in the excise police which led to loss to public exchequre also. The ED officials have also grilled AAP MLA Durgesh Pathak and minister Satyendar Jain, lodged in Tihar Jail in a different case, to find out who all were involved within the administration in framing and executing of the excise policy 2022.
The CBI is also parallely conducting investigation in the case and had arrested businessman Vijay Nair.