Visuals show ED and security officials outside Sanjay Singh's Delhi house.
A search is underway at Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Sanjay Singh's house in a money laundering case linked to the Delhi liquor policy case. Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials reached the Rajya Sabha MP's Delhi house early morning.
Mr Singh is the latest AAP leader to be under the central agencies' scanner in the liquor policy case after Manish Sisodia, a former deputy chief minister in the AAP government in Delhi, was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in February.
The excise policy case was filed in connection with the Delhi government's liquor policy of 2021 that was later scrapped. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was also questioned for nearly nine hours in the same case in April.
Mr Singh had months earlier put up posters outside his house to "welcome" ED officials. The AAP shared the photo on X, formerly known as Twitter, with fire emojis in response to the searches.
"Sanjay Singh - another name of honesty," the AAP said sharing a video of the MP, in which he could be seen vouching for his honesty.
Mr Kejriwal, who heads the AAP, came out in support of his colleague and accused the BJP (without naming them) of "desperate attempts" to derail rivals ahead of next year's general election. "For the last year we have been seeing... there is noise about alleged liquor scam. More than 1000 raids have been conducted and not a single paise was recovered," he said.
Delhi minister Saurabh Bhardwaj said the charges against Mr Singh were fictious.
"This is such a fictitious scam in which the probe is on for the last 15 months. ED and CBI have conducted raids in at least 1,000 places but did not recover even Rs 1 from anywhere. They will not get anything at the residence of Sanjay Singh as well. The BJP is losing the elections - this is the truth," Mr Bhardwaj said.
The BJP stated it has been saying that the AAP has looted the people of Delhi. "They made crores through this liquor policy," said Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva.
Sanjay Singh's father said the probe agency is doing its work and he will cooperate with them. "I will wait for the time when he (Mr Singh) gets clearance," he told reporters.
Businessman Dinesh Arora, one of the approvers in the case, had claimed that Mr Singh introduced him to Mr Sisodia, the then excise minister. But he was never named as an accused by the ED, which has filed three chargesheets in the case. He was neither summoned nor was his statement recorded in this connection, though the contents of the chargesheets made references to him.
The CBI contends that liquor companies were involved in framing the excise policy, which would have led to a 12 per cent profit for the firms. The agency alleged that a liquor lobby it dubbed the "South Group" had paid kickbacks for it. Of the proposed 12 per cent profit, six per cent was routed to public servants through middlemen, the agency claimed.
The ED is probing into the alleged laundering of the kickbacks.
After the policy was scrapped, the BJP said the Delhi government went back to the old liquor policy to cover up the corruption. Mr Sisodia had denied any wrongdoing and his party said his arrest was an "attack on the Delhi model of governance".
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