The Enforcement Directorate arrested Amanatullah Khan, a member of the Aam Aadmi Party, on Monday in relation to suspected irregularities in the Delhi Waqf Board appointments and the leasing of its assets, which are estimated to be worth ₹100 crore.
Following dramatic scenes from the federal agency’s raid on his Delhi apartment this morning, the AAP politician was arrested. He said in a video statement on X that the ED was acting insensitively and that the raids had affected his mother-in-law, a cancer patient who underwent surgery last week.
“The ED has come to arrest me on the pretext of a search. My mother-in-law is a cancer patient… she was operated on four days ago. She is at my home. I informed the ED of this…”
Images taken this morning showed an elderly woman resting on a bed while Mr. Khan asked for four weeks’ notice while speaking with a man who appeared to be an ED officer. To this the man responds, “Why do you believe we are here to arrest you…” and Mr Khan shoots back, “Why else are you here?”
A woman, who might be Mr Khan’s wife, is heard saying, “What do you need to search at a three-room house. Why do you have to turn my home upside down every time?”
“She has cancer and she has been operated upon. I will take you to court if anything happens to my mother. She can’t even stand,” the woman, possibly Mr Khan’s wife, adds.
Mr Khan, meanwhile, has also rubbished the allegations and accused the ED of “harassing me for two years… slapping false cases (and) creating problems”. “They are harassing our party (the AAP) … they want to break our party… we will not get scared,” the MLA from Delhi’s Okhla said.
Mr Khan’s posted a message of support on X, declaring “revolutionaries will not bow down to the tyranny of a dictator” and accusing the agency of acting over a “fake case”.
After former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia was detained by a central agency in February of last year, Amanatullah Khan is now the fourth prominent AAP leader to be arrested by a federal agency. The other two are Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh.
In connection with the purported liquor policy scam, the ED and Central Bureau of Investigation detained the latter three, Mr Sisodia and Mr Kejriwal, perhaps just for good measure.
Bail has been granted to Sanjay Singh and Manish Sisodia. In Mr. Sisodia’s case, bail was granted last month following over eighteen months in jail; the Supreme Court referred to his protracted incarceration without a trial (or any prospect of one in the near future) as a “travesty of justice”.
After winning his first bail hearing in the ED case, Mr. Kejriwal was arrested by the CBI at the last minute and is still being held in custody.
The ED has been criticised by both Mr. Singh and Mr. Sisodia, who noted that the organisation has been “repeatedly reprimanded by the Supreme Court… that they should not conduct an investigation with malice”.
Mr. Singh angrily remarked, “Despite this, today the ED reached the residence of Amanatullah Khan early morning to conduct a raid… at a time when his mother-in-law has cancer and has undergone an operation,” blasting the agency for moving quickly in a case that had been pending for six years.
Amanatullah Khan was charged in 2016 after the CBI brought its case. After a protracted investigation, Mr. Singh said the central agency declined to detain the AAP leader. “He did not commit any crime so CBI did not arrest him… but even after that ED does not close its case.”
Rouse Avenue Court in Delhi granted Mr. Khan bail in April due to his claimed failure to appear at the ED’s summons in the Waqf Board money laundering case.
“This is the only work left for the ED…” Reiterating what many have said, Mr. Sisodia said that the ruling BJP utilises government agencies to harass competitors, especially in the run-up to an election.
“… to muffle every voice against the BJP and jail the ones who do not break,” Mr. Sisodia declared. Party colleague and Delhi Health Minister Saurabh Bhardwaj echoed him, tying the ED’s move against Mr. Khan to an Assembly election that is scheduled for the city in the early months of 2019.
