New Delhi, 19 August (H.S.): Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has accused Union Home Minister Amit Shah of having Satyendar Jain, a former Delhi minister, arrested. Kejriwal alleged that arrests are now being made not on the basis of wrongdoing but for political reasons. Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly Atishi also described Jain’s arrest as an act of political vendetta.

In a post on social media platform X on Wednesday, Kejriwal questioned the timing of Jain’s arrest and alleged that it had been carried out on the directions of Amit Shah.

Kejriwal claimed that he had spoken to an officer of the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) and that there had initially been no plan to arrest Jain. However, he alleged that Jain was arrested in the afternoon following a phone call from the Union Home Minister.

Kejriwal said arrests were now allegedly being made not on the basis of whether a person had committed an offence, but according to whom the government wanted to target next.

Atishi said Jain had previously served as the party’s in-charge for Himachal Pradesh when he was arrested and is now the party’s co-in-charge for Punjab, where Assembly elections are scheduled to be held in February. She alleged that this demonstrated that the government was targeting AAP leaders to serve its political interests.

She described Jain’s arrest as part of what she called a retaliatory campaign by the government. Atishi alleged that instead of taking action against those responsible for scams, the government was implicating AAP leaders in what she described as false cases.

Atishi further claimed that Jain had earlier been kept in jail for two years in a false case and was subsequently released after no evidence was found against him. She alleged that his latest arrest was once again part of what she described as “politics of falsehood” and accused the government of deliberately targeting him.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar