New Delhi, May 30 (Representative) The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has come out strongly in defence, showing solidarity with Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on Monday allegedly for his involvement in a money laundering case. The party’s senior leadership has called Jain’s arrest a politically motivated attempt to hinder AAP’s rise in poll bound Himachal Pradesh. Addressing a press conference, AAP senior leader and Rajya Sabha Member Sanjay Jain said the Bharatiya Janata Party ruled Centre has misued the ED to arrest Jain in an eight year old false and baseless case today. He also said that the arrest is merely an intimidation technique by the saffron party to save its face from a major loss it’s going to witness in the upcoming assembly elections in the hill state. “The ED summoned Shri Satyendar Jain seven times in 2018 in relation to this case but they never had anything against him. Following that, the ED took no action from 2019 to the present. The case appeared to be closed. Now the case has been reopened before the Himachal elections with a clear vested interest of the BJP,” Singh said.
“The BJP government has alleged that Shri Satyendar Jain was involved in hawala work through some companies between 2015 and 2017. The truth however is that Shri Satyendar Jain had resigned from all these companies in March 2013 and had nothing to do with these companies during 2015-2017. The people who were the owners of these companies during 2015-2017 have confessed to their crimes in the court and clearly submitted that all this money belongs to them. The court has also accepted this point,” he told the reporters. Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia also reiterated the party’s stance that the case against Jain is false and politially motivated to cause political loss to AAP in Himachal election in an unethical manner. “BJP fears a crushing loss in Himachal at the hands of AAP which is why they coerced the ED to arrest him. ED has summoned Shri Satyendar Jain several times. They stopped calling him as they had nothing against him. The case has been reopened as Sr Satyendar Jain was appointed AAP’s Himachal In-charge. BJP got him arrested so they could stop him from going to Himachal,” he posted on Twitter.
“This is nothing but yet another instance of the BJP manhandling the state machinery for political gains,” he added. Senior AAP leader was arrested on Monday by ED under the sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in a case connected to hawala transactions related to a Kolkata-based company His arrest comes a month after the financial probe agency had attached properties worth Rs 4.81 crore of the family and companies “beneficially owned and controlled” by Jain in connection with a money-laundering probe. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had filed a case against Jain and his family in August 2017 for alleged money laundering of up to Rs 1.62 crore. The CBI had alleged that the senior AAP leader and his family set up four shell firms – companies with no real business – to launder Rs 11.78 crore in 2011-12 and Rs 4.63 crore in 2015-16. The ED started its probe into the money laundering allegations based on the CBI’s FIR. The ED had also questioned the AAP MLA from Shakur Basti in 2018 in connection with the case. Jain is the minister for health, power, home, PWD, industries, urban development, flood, irrigation and water in the Arvind Kejriwal-led government.