New Delhi, July 4: The CBI today arrested Arvind Kejriwal's principal secretary Rajendra Kumar and deputy secretary Tarun Sharma on charges of corruption, prompting his Aam Aadmi Party to allege a conspiracy to destabilise the Delhi government.
"This is a war against the people of Delhi," deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia thundered at his residence. "Modiji is taking revenge on the people of Delhi for not voting for the BJP (in the Assembly elections)."
He claimed the timing of the arrests was suspect as 11 key bureaucrats, including Delhi chief minister Kejriwal's additional secretary Geetika Sharma, had been transferred in the last two days.
"You think you can stop us from working by arrests and transfers? Hum chaprasi ke dum par sarkar chalayenge (We will run the government on the strength of peons)!"
Along with Kumar and Sharma, three others were arrested this afternoon after questioning at the CBI headquarters. A CBI spokesperson, R.K. Gaur, said they had been arrested after they evaded questions.
According to the FIR, Kumar had promoted a company, Endeavour System Pvt Ltd, and facilitated tenders worth Rs 9.5 crore to it from the Delhi government. A probe had revealed that the scam was worth Rs 50 crore, the CBI spokesperson said.
Kumar is Kejriwal's batchmate from IIT Kharagpur. There was no word today from the chief minister, who is in Punjab campaigning for the 2017 Assembly elections.
Asked if the AAP regime still backed Kumar, Sisodia said: "If Rajendra Kumar or anybody is guilty, then they should be punished.
"But the timing of the arrests and transfers soon after Arvind's rally in Amritsar, when AAP is expected to get 100 seats in Punjab and sweep Goa, shows that the Modi government simply wants to paralyse the government of Delhi....
"Till date, the CBI has not shown the court any documents to even justify the raid on the CM's office. "
Sisodia claimed the transfers of the officers - who belong to the NCT of Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli Civil Service - was done without any discussion with the Joint Cadre Authority that governs the cadre.
CBI sources claimed that when Kumar headed Delhi Transco in 2007, he brought in a director of Endeavour Systems, Sandeep Kumar, who has also been arrested after cancelling the advertisement for the post.
Principal secretary Kumar allegedly awarded contracts for hardware and software without a fair tendering process and obtained forged quotations, the sources added.
In 2009, the sources claimed, bribes of Rs 1.7 crore was paid to Endeavour Systems by Seal Infotech in lieu of a government contract worth Rs 21 crore.
In April, this year, the CBI special court had pulled up the agency for not providing evidence to justify the freezing of Endeavour Systems' bank accounts.
The court had ordered defreezing of the accounts and told the prosecutor: "CBI is conspicuously ambiguous and also not expanding arguments from where the commissions were received by the applicant company and in what manner the commissions are illegal....
"There is explicit requirement of Section 102(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure that after seizure, CBI has to forthwith report the concerned magistrate regarding the seizure. However, in the present case, CBI flouted this requirement with impunity."
