BRS Leader K Kavitha Paid Rs 100 Crore To AAP For Favours, Says ED; AAP Reacts

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has said BRS leader K Kavitha conspired with Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and senior AAP leader Manish Sisodia to get favours and was involved in the payment of Rs 100 crore.

K Kavitha, who is the daughter of former Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao, was earlier arrested by the probe agency from Hyderabad in a dramatic manner and brought to Delhi in connection with the now scrapped Delhi excise policy case.

In a statement, the probe agency reportedly said: "Kavitha along with others conspired with the top leaders of AAP including Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia for getting favours in the Delhi excise policy formulation and implementation."

"In exchange for these favours, she was involved in paying Rs 100 crore to the leaders of AAP," the statement added.

The agency’s statement comes a day after it issued a ninth summon to Kejriwal in the case and asked him to appear before it for questioning.

K Kavitha is expected to remain in ED custody till March 23. ED has claimed that it had credible evidence against the BRS leader.

The agency has said K Kavitha and her aides made advance payments to AAP leaders related to Delhi excise policy and planned to generate profits from the same.

Her arrests triggered protests in Telangana with BRS leaders staging protest marches terming the ED action “illegal" and demanding her release.

"BRS held protests across Telangana against the illegal arrest of K Kavitha," the official X handle of the BRS said.

AAP leaders including Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Jha accused in the case are already in jail.

On the other hand, the AAP has termed ED probe against its leaders as a ploy of BJP to keep their leadership away from campaigning for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

AAP has said the ED has no concrete evidence in the case and the AAP leaders are languishing in jail due to the draconian provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

AAP also questioned the ED's neutrality as an independent investigative agency and said that it is working like the political wing of the BJP.

“On earlier occasions too, ED has released such blatantly false and frivolous statements which show that instead of being a neutral investigative agency, it is working like a political wing of BJP. This is a desperate attempt to malign the image of Shri Arvind Kejriwal and Shri Manish Sisodia by planting falsehoods and creating a media sensation every day," the statement released by AAP said.

“ED's statement, which presents no new fact or evidence, speaks volumes of its frustratation since they have not recovered a single rupee or piece of evidence in this case, despite carrying out over 500 raids and questioning thousands of witnesses. Even the SC has discarded ED's claim that any money trail of Rs 100 Cr exists in this matter. The entire world knows by now that the entire Excise case is fake and without an iota of evidence," the statement added.

“For the last two years, ED has been trying to find the proceeds of crime in this case. It has raided the house of many AAP leaders including Shri Manish Sisodia's house but they didn't find a single rupee. But we now know that almost all the companies who have given Electoral bonds to the BJP were earlier raided by ED. That means companies accused by ED of money laundering transferred their proceeds of crime to BJP accounts immediately after being raided. An impartial investigation into this would result into at least a thousand FIRs. This also includes companies raided by ED in the Excise case who later ended up donating Electoral bonds to BJP. So if the ED is interested in finding the proceeds of crime in the Delhi Excise case, it exists in BJP's accounts," the AAP statement further said.