Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi
New Delhi, Mar 10: Senior Aam Aadmi Party leader and former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia on Tuesday accused the Narendra Modi government of normalising the practice of sending people to jail on “false and fabricated” grounds.
Speaking to the media after returning from Katra, where he offered prayers at the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi shrine, Sisodia alleged that the Centre targets voices that speak against it.
“The Modi government – the way Sonam Wangchuk, Arvind Kejriwal, Satyendar Jain and Manish Sisodia were arrested – knows only how to put in jail any voice that is raised in the country,” he said.
He further alleged that the government fabricates accusations and evidence to implicate people. “They will make false allegations, create fabricated evidence and arrest people to extract statements that can be used to send others to jail,” Sisodia said.
During his visit to Jammu and Kashmir, Sisodia also met the family of jailed AAP MLA Mehraj Malik.
His remarks come days after a Delhi trial court, on February 27, discharged Arvind Kejriwal, Sisodia and 21 others in the Central Bureau of Investigation’s case related to the alleged liquor policy scam involving the AAP government.
The CBI later challenged the trial court’s order in the Delhi High Court, calling it “illegal on the face of it”. On Monday, the High Court stayed the trial court’s critical observations against the CBI’s investigating officer.
Addressing party workers in Jammu and Kashmir, Sisodia said their struggle was against “dictatorship” and urged them not to lose hope, asserting that the charges against Malik would eventually collapse just as they had against the AAP leadership in Delhi.
He also criticised the government for allegedly jailing individuals raising public issues such as demands for schools and hospitals. Sisodia further claimed that history would remember Prime Minister Modi as someone who “surrendered before the US” while sending nationalist voices in India to jail.
Expressing concern over people losing jobs and traders facing business losses, Sisodia also questioned why the United States was projecting India as its “colony” on the global stage.