Why doesn’t CBI act against Jaitley & friends, asks Kirti Azad

BJP Member of Parliament Kirti Azad asked why the Central Bureau of Investigation was sitting over the ₹400-crore DDCA scam despite having all the documents required.

BJP Member of Parliament called the bluff of CBI’s raids in Chennai and Income Tax department’s dramatic searches for disproportionate wealth allegedly concealed by RJD chief Lalu Prasad and his family members.

Azad, who has been alleging corruption in the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) during the tenure of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley as President, tweeted why the CBI has not yet raided friends of Jaitley who made a killing while he was President of DDCA.

In one of his tweets last week, Azad had said that while the brother-in-law of Arvind Kejriwal is described as ‘mafia’ over an allegedly irregular dealing of ₹2 crore, what about the 19 companies with the same address, the same email and the same directors, who were allegedly paid ₹132 crore?

Azad claims that he had submitted the documents in support of his allegations to the CBI. But the central investigative agency has predictably not moved against Jaitley and friends.

RJD chief Lalu Yadav also tweeted that he would not succumb to pressure and coercive tactics. “My name is Lalu Yadav—I am not afraid of your agencies,” he declared. Saying that he was being told that he would be arrested long before the August 27 rally, Lalu re-tweeted Mamata Banerjee’s supportive tweet that she would be there at the rally on August 27.

Heated exchanges were witnessed between Union Minister Arun Jaitley and senior advocate Ram Jethmalani in the Delhi High Court  during the former’s cross-examination in a defamation case against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

The recording of Jaitley’s statement in a civil defamation suit of Rs 10 crore filed by him against Kejriwal and other AAP functionaries could not continue as the Minister objected to the use of a word against him by the veteran lawyer representing the Chief Minister.

The Finance Minister  who appeared before Joint Registrar Deepali Sharma, lost his cool and asked Jethmalani whether the word was used as per instructions from Kejriwal. “If this is so, I would aggravate the charges against the defendant (Kejriwal),” Jaitley said, adding that there was a limit to personal malice.

Senior advocates Rajiv Nayar and Sandeep Sethi, who were representing Jaitley, also said that Jethmalani was putting scandalous questions and should restrain himself from asking irrelevant ones “as this matter is Arun Jaitley versus Arvind Kejriwal, and not Ram Jethmalani versus Arun Jaitley”.

To this, Jethmalani said he used the word on the instruction of Kejriwal. However, Anupam Srivastav, advocate on record for Kejriwal since the beginning of the suit, submitted that he had no instruction on the use of the word.

A group of lawyers, including Jethmalani, who were defending the AAP leaders also maintained that Jaitley was not entitled to a claim of Rs 10 crore on account of his alleged defamation.

Jaitley has filed the civil defamation suit seeking Rs 10 crore damages from Kejriwal and five other AAP leaders—Raghav Chadha, Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh and Deepak Bajpai—for accusing him of financial irregularities in the DDCA of which he was the President from 2000 to 2013.

The verbal exchange between Jethmalani and Jaitley started when the former asked a question alleging that his article on irregularities in DDCA could not get published in a weekly magazine at the instance of the Finance Minister.

Jethmalani also alleged that the article pertained to the corruption in DDCA during the period when Jaitley was its president. The question, however, was disallowed by Joint Registrar observing that she had already termed the article irrelevant on day of recording of the statement on the grounds that it was not connected with the instant case. Jethmalani, however, insisted that it was.