ED raids Sanjay Singh in liquor case, arrests him

NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday arrested AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh as part of its probe into the Delhi excise policy, in a development which drags the AAP leadership into the saga of alleged corruption in distribution of liquor vends by the Arvind Kejriwal government.
Singh was taken into custody after day-long searches on his residence and other premises in the capital.He is likely to be produced before a special Prevention ofMoney Laundering Act (PMLA) court here on Thursday.
Singh claimed he was being arrested “without any evidence” and his party said the ED’s action was “completely illegal” and showed BJP’s “frustration” as it was going to lose the 2024 polls to the INDIA bloc. BJP on its part mounted a blistering attack on Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, accusing him of being the “kingpin” of the alleged scam and said “handcuffs” were not far away.The arrest of the RS member, the second AAP leader to be jailed in connection with the liquor scam after Manish Sisodia, came a day after a court accepted the plea of two of the key accused in the scam – Dinesh Arora, a prominent liquor trader, and Raghav Magunta – to turn approvers.
The ED had already put on record Arora’s alleged association with Singh in the chargesheets filed earlier in the money laundering case.
Singh, before his arrest, again refuted charges and denied any links to the liquor cartel, calling his arrest “political vendetta”.
Arora and Magunta, son of YSR Congress MP Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy, were arrested by the agency earlier this year and are out on bail. Besides the two, businessman and AAP’s communication in charge Vijay Nair, a close aide of Kejriwal, was also arrested.

In July, the ED had arrested Arora even though the liquor trader, who has been accused of collecting and distributing bribes in connection with allocation of liquor vends, had by then turned approver.
The ED had claimed in its chargesheet that around ₹200 crore in bribes were paid to public servants in Delhi by the liquor cartel controlled by the ‘South Group’ that benefited from tweaks made in Delhi’s liquor policy. In the same chargesheet, filed after the arrest of Sisodia, the ED had claimed that Sanjay Singh allegedly introduced Arora to Sisodia.

The agency claims that Arora said that it was at the request of Singh that he spoke to many restaurant owners and arranged cheques amounting to Rs 82 lakh and handed them to Sisodia for AAP’s campaign in Delhi. The ED further claimed in its chargesheet that Arora was constantly getting work done from Sisodia relating to the excise department and that he had also met Kejriwal once at his residence with Singh.
After Singh refuted ED’s claims, the agency came out with a statement reiterating the involvement of the AAP leader in the scam. It said that contrary to Singh’s claim, his name had been mentioned in the chargesheet multiple times.