Manish Sisodia Second AAP Minister To Be Arrested In Less Than A Year
Manish Sisodia, the deputy chief minister of Delhi, is the second Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) minister to be detained by a federal agency in less than a calendar year.
In May of last year, Satyendar Jain, a colleague of Mr. Sisodia and the Delhi Health Minister, became the first AAP minister to be detained by a federal agency. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) have been cited by the AAP as tools in the hands of the BJP-led government to harass them.
In implementing a new liquor sale regulation in the nation’s capital, Mr. Sisodia and others are accused of engaging in corrupt behaviour. Last year, Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena had requested the CBI investigation. The Delhi government went back to its previous alcohol policy and accused the Lieutenant Governor of suffering a revenue loss of worth crores of rupees.
After eight hours of questioning today, the CBI took Mr. Sisodia into custody. However, the ED detained Mr. Jain in connection with an accused case of money laundering. The investigation team claimed that in 2015–16, the minister in the Arvind Kejriwal administration engaged in hawala transactions with a company situated in Kolkata.
In a hawala system, two parties engage in financial transactions using neighbourhood agents on their behalf without the money actually going via authorised banking systems.
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