Sacked Delhi minister Kapil Mishra on Friday reiterated that Delhi chief minister and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) received money through "hawala" network, soon after health minister Satyendar Jain filed a defamation case against the former colleague and MLA Manjinder Sirsa.
Mishra had earlier accused Kejriwal of corruption, claiming that he witnessed Jain hand over Rs 2 crore to the the chief minister. Sirsa had said he knew of the transaction.
Showing a powerpoint presentation to reporters during a press conference in New Delhi as his evidence, Mishra said the AAP received funds from shell companies.
“Aam Aadmi Party gets fund from Hawala operator... Arvind Kejriwal’s collar is in my hand. He will go to Tihar.”
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“These are the letterheads of the companies that gave donation to the Aam Aadmi Party… I challenge Arvind Kejriwal to tell Income Tax that donation was received from Mukesh Kumar (a Delhi-based businessman),” he said.
Mukesh Kumar, a property dealer and tobacco trader, had claimed he donated the money through a demand draft on March 31, 2014.
“Kejriwal will have to leave the country the day party leaders’ foreign trips come to light…Why is he silent? It is evident from this presentation how the AAP forged letterheads to shell companies. These letter heads were fake," said the sacked water supply minister.
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Mishra also said Kumar’s company was a VAT defaulter. Instead of paying VAT to Delhi government, his company donated money to party.”
Mishra also claimed that illegal funds received by the party have been used to send its leaders on foreign trips. He has also sought the details of foreign trips undertaken by Sanjay Singh, Ashish Khetan, Satyendar Jain, Raghav Chaddha and Durgesh.
Senior AAP leader Sanjay Singh trashed the charges saying the donations in question, amounting to Rs 2 crore that were made on April 5, 2014, were received through "proper banking channels".
"There was no illegality involved. It has been two years. Why have the investigating agencies failed to unearth any wrongdoing?" Singh asked.
Initially, the AAP had maintained that it was not aware of the source behind the amount, received in the form of four cheques of Rs 50 lakh each, which had found an oblique mention even in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech during the 2015 Delhi assembly election campaign.
