New Delhi: Enforcement Directorate names Manish Sisodia as accused for 1st time

New Delhi : The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday filed a fresh charge sheet in the Delhi excise policy-linked money laundering case naming AAP leader and former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia as an accused in the case for the first time, official sources said. Sisodia was arrested by the ED in this case on March 9 from Tihar Jail and he is currently in judicial custody.

The 51-year-old Aam Aadmi Party leader was first arrested by the CBI, which is also probing this case. This is the fourth supplementary and overall fifth charge sheet or prosecution complaint filed in the case by the ED before a designated special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Delhi. The about 270 page charge sheet has annexures running into 2,000 pages.

The agency has called Sisodia a "key conspirator" in this case. It had alleged, in the previous charge sheets, that the liquor policy 'scam' was a "conspiracy" undertaken by some of the big political leaders of the AAP and the so called 'South Group' comprising BRS leader K Kavitha, YSR Congress MP Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy and others who "used" proxies and dummies to conceal their involvement.

"On one hand it is Manish Sisodia and other top leaders of AAP and Vijay Nair who was working under the overall guidance and sanction of Manish Sisodia," the agency claimed in an earlier filed charge sheet whose cognisance was taken by the court recently.

"The scam initiated with the drafting of the excise policy of 2021-22 by the AAP leaders, specifically by Manish Sisodia with an objective of generating illegal funds followed by a nexus/understanding between key players of the South Group and Manish Sisodia and thereafter managed by Vijay Nair, who is a representative of AAP, payment of advance kickbacks from the former to the latter in exchange of undue favours," the ED said.