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ED questions Sisodia in Tihar
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Tuesday questioned and recorded the statement of former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia as part of its money laundering probe into alleged irregularities in the excise policy matter, official sources said.
The ED investigators reached the Tihar Jail to record the statement of Sisodia under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The CBI had arrested Sisodia on February 26 in connection with alleged corruption in the formulation and implementation of the now-scrapped Delhi liquor or excise policy for 2021-22. He is lodged in judicial custody till March 20. The ED obtained the court's permission to question the 51-year-old Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader, who till recently was the deputy CM of Delhi, in the cell number 1 of the jail for three days.
The agency is expected to question him about the alleged change and destruction of cellphones that were in his possession and the policy decisions and the timeline followed by him as the excise minister of Delhi. These charges were made by it in its supplementary complaints filed before the court. The ED may invoke section 19 of the PMLA, that allows it to arrest people involved or accused in the case, if the investigation officer has "reasons to believe" that the person is "guilty" of the offence of money laundering.
The CBI, during its custody of Sisodia, had confronted him with his former secretary C Arvind and then Excise commissioner Arava Gopi Krishna in connection with alleged manipulation of the excise policy. Sisodia was not mentioned as accused in the charge sheet of the CBI filed in the case on November 25 last year. It is alleged that the Delhi government's excise policy for 2021-22 to grant licences to liquor traders allowed cartelisation and favoured certain dealers, who had allegedly paid bribes for it, a charge strongly refuted by the AAP. The policy was later scrapped and the Delhi LG recommended a CBI probe following which the ED booked a case against the same accused under the PMLA.
