Hours after BJP released a ‘sting video’ to claim that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia had taken “commissions” worth “hundreds of crores” to benefit private players under the now scrapped excise policy, Sisodia tore into the Centre, saying that they are mounting such pressure to press for his arrest that a CBI officer committed suicide as a result.
“Two days ago, a CBI official committed suicide. We found that the officer was Jitendra Kumar, he was a legal advisor in CBI’s anti-corruption branch. His job was to approve or reject things based on legality. He was also looking into the legality of the FIRagainst me,” Sisodia said.
We have found that he was being pressured to build a false case against me in a wrong manner and pressure was being built to arrest me. He was not permitting this. And there was so much pressure on him that he committed suicide. This is very sad. Pressure was being mounted to make a false case legally sound. This is wrong. My sympathies are with his family. I also want to request Prime Minister Narendra Modi – if you want to trap me in a wrong case, do it. You wanted to raid me, you did it. You filed a false case against me. You want to arrest me, tell me where you want me to come and I will be there. Please don’t pressure officers and lead them to commit suicide,” he said.
He added: “This is destroying families. You keep thinking about who you can use the CBI and ED, how you can topple elected governments, buy MLAs. When will you think about building schools? About building hospitals? About fighting inflation, about jobs? All you think about is how to topple opposition governments. I want to ask 3 questions of the PM about the suicide of Jitendra Kumar – why is there so much pressure on the officials that they are forced to commit suicide and to what extent will you torture your own officials; is the only job of the central government to run ‘operation lotus’; and how many more sacrifices will it take to crush opposition governments?”
This is a very sad incident. Officers are being forced to commit suicide, this has never happened,” he said.
Asked about the BJP’s ‘sting operation’, Sisodia said: “BJP has been saying there is a scam and quoting numbers like Rs 30 crore, Rs 144 crore, Rs 1,300 crore. Then they got CBI to file an FIR, wherein they tried to drag me into the white dealings between two companies. That was also on the basis of sources. My house was raided. They searched my locker; they didn’t find anything. When the CBI has nearly given me a clean chit and couldn’t find anything against me, BJP said that they have conducted a sting. Then they make someone on the road sit in a car and ask him some questions. That is a sting? This is a joke. I also have many such videos. I will also give, you should run them as well.”
