Delhi Chief Minister Arving Kejriwal’s personal assistant (PA) Bibhav Kumar was on Thursday grilled by the Enforcement Directorate on the destruction and concealing of evidence, among other things, in the Delhi excise scam.
Kumar’s statement was taken by the sleuths at their headquarters in the national capital under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act over allegations that Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, Biphav Kumar, and other accused either destroyed or changed SIM cards and 170 phone numbers to conceal facts in the Delhi excise policy case.
Besides that, Bibhav Kumar also facilitated meetings and interactions between the accused and Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal.
ED’s allegations
According to one of the two prosecution complaints filed by the ED in the case, “Vijay Nair told Sameer Mahendru that 2021-22 excise policy was the brainchild of Arvind Kejriwal. Mahendru wanted to verify this fact. And to verify the credibility, clout and influence of Nair, Mahendru wanted to meet Kejriwal. Kejriwal’s PA fixed meetings between Mahendru and Kejriwal twice at the instance of Nair. But Mahendru couldn’t somehow meet Kejriwal...”
So far the ED has arrested nine persons in the scam where ₹100 crore bribe is alleged to have been paid to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders and part of that was used to fund assembly elections in Goa, the agency had charged in the prosecution complaint.
Manish Sisodia is among the accused in the case which the CBI had taken up for probe on the directions of Delhi LG and later ED also got into it to ascertain money laundering aspect of the scam.