Delhi excise policy case: Arvind Kejriwal reacts as ED arrests Manish Sisodia on eve of bail plea hearing

Initially arrested on Feb 26 by the CBI, the former Delhi deputy is in judicial custody till March 20, and is currently lodged in Tihar jail.

That the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Manish Sisodia on the eve of a hearing on his bail plea in the Delhi excise policy case shows that the Modi government is hell bent on keeping him in jail for a long time, that too in a fake case, said Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday, shortly after his former deputy's arrest by the central agency.

AAP on Wednesday said the court ordered that Sisodia will be kept at Vipasana cell but he is kept with hardened criminals. (PTI)

The public, said Kejriwal, is ‘watching everything and will teach the Centre a lesson.'

“Manish was first arrested by the CBI. It did not find any evidence, no money was recovered in its raid. The hearing on his bail plea will take place tomorrow. He would've been granted bail. So, the ED arrested him. They (the government) have only one goal – to keep Manish behind the bars at all costs, and that too by filing fake cases every day. The public will answer,” the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor tweeted in Hindi.

The ED arrested Sisodia under money laundering charges after questioning him for a second time in three days. He was initially arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Feb 26; a day later, the city's Rouse Avenue court – where his plea for regular bail will come up – sent him to CBI's custody for five days and, on March 4, for two more days. Eventually, he was sent to judicial custody and is currently lodged in Tihar jail, where both rounds of questioning by the ED took place.

Satyendar Jain, another jailed AAP leader is also in Tihar; the Enforcement Directorate arrested him in May last year in a separate case. Both resigned as ministers on Feb 28 after the Supreme Court refused to entertain Sisodia's bail plea.

The AAP has accused the Union government – to whom the central agencies report – of a ‘witch-hunt’ against the party as prime minister Narendra Modi, it claims, is ‘scared’ of Kejriwal's ‘rising popularity.'