Police said no permission was sought by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg…reports Asian Lite News
The Delhi Police on Monday booked Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders a day after they staged a protest which was led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal towards the BJP headquarters here without permission, officials said.
Police said that Section 144 of the CrPC was implemented near the BJP headquarters on Sunday after Kejriwal’s call for a protest march as no permission was sought by AAP at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg.
“A case under Section 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) has been registered at Indraprastha Estate police station,” said a senior police official.
On Sunday, the AAP workers led by Kejriwal marched toward the BJP headquarters and sat in front of the 10-foot barricades erected by the police to block them.
However, the protest ended after just 20 minutes, and all the leaders, including CM Kejriwal, returned to the party office.
Before the protest march, Kejriwal had accused the BJP of orchestrating “Operation Jhadu” to suppress the AAP.
To prevent any incidents and maintain order during the protest, the Delhi Police had deployed a significant number of officials and paramilitary personnel.
AAP faces ED heat
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has unearthed a Rs 7.08 crore alleged foreign donation scandal involving the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which violated FCRA and election guidelines by manipulating the donor identities.
Sources said this amount was raised in violation of the provisions of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), 2010, and the Representation of the People Act, 1951, by concealing, mis-declaring and manipulating the identities and nationalities of foreign donors as well as several other facts relating to foreign donations.
According to the sources, the ED during its investigation found several instances of irregularities in the collection of foreign funds by the AAP and its leaders, as it accused some of them, including AAP MLA Durgesh Pathak, of siphoning off the funds collected during a fund-raising event in Canada in 2016 for personal benefits.
The ED has substantiated the allegations through the contents of e-mails exchanged between various AAP volunteers and functionaries, including Aniket Saxena (Coordinator of AAP Overseas India), Kumar Vishwas (then Convenor of AAP Oversea India), Kapil Bhardwaj (AAP member), and Pathak.
The investigation so far has revealed that not only amounts were collected through fund-raising campaigns in the US and Canada, and the identities of the actual donors were concealed to circumvent the restrictions imposed under FCRA on donations by foreign citizens to a political party, but an analysis of the data of foreign donations also revealed that multiple donors used the same passport numbers, e-mail IDs, mobile numbers, and credit card details for donations.
“The ED has shared all the information with the Union Home Ministry relating to its investigations, including the details of the donors such as names, country, passport number, amount donated, mode of donation, bank account details of the receiver, billing name, billing address, billing telephone numbers, e-mail, time and date of donation, and the payment gateways used, etc., which were gathered during the investigation under PMLA,” the sources said.
The agency has also gathered materials relating to the donations through e-mail IDs and mobile numbers of Canadian nationals.
“The FCRA violation and other irregularities in receiving foreign funds by the AAP emerged during the investigation in a case registered in Punjab’s Fazilka district against an international drugs cartel involved in smuggling of heroin from Pakistan through the barbed fencing on the Indo-Pak border,” said the sources.
In this connection, a special court in Fazilka issued a summons to then AAP MLA from Bholath, Sukhpal Singh Khaira, to face the trial as an accused.
During the ED investigation, searches were conducted at the residential premises of Khaira and his associates, which resulted in the seizure of incriminating documents containing details of foreign donations (four type-written pages containing a list of donors in the US, and eight hand-written pages of a diary).
The ED alleged that the scrutiny of the seized documents revealed the receipt of foreign donations amounting to $1,19,000.
Khaira in his statement claimed that the foreign funding of $1,19,000 was raised during overseas fund-raising campaigns in the US organised by the AAP in April-May 2015, ahead of the 2017 Assembly elections in Punjab.
The ED said that in this context, Pankaj Gupta, the national secretary of AAP, was summoned, who admitted that AAP received foreign donations either through cheque or through the online mode.
“The investigation also revealed that AAP set up a body — AAP Overseas lndia — along with volunteers in countries like the US, Canada, Australia etc., whose primary task was to mobilise foreign funds for AAP in India.
It also revealed that a target of overseas donations of Rs 50 crore was fixed for these volunteers in 2016,” the sources said.
Donations totalling Rs 51,15,044 were received using e-mail IDs and mobile numbers of 19 Canadian nationals, as per the ED probe.
However, the names of these Canadian nationals were not reflected correctly in the records, the sources said.
Instead, different names were mentioned against these donations, which was done intentionally by the AAP to hide donations by foreign nationals, which are in violation of Section 3 of FCRA, and Section 298 of the Representation of the People Act, the sources said.
‘Earlier I was ‘Lady Singham’, now a ‘BJP agent?’
AAP Rajya Sabha MP Swati Maliwal said on Monday that until she filed a complaint against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s former PS Bhibav Kumar, she was the ‘Lady Singham’ and today she has become a ‘BJP agent’.
“Since yesterday, Delhi ministers are spreading lies that an FIR has been filed against me for corruption, hence I did all this on the instructions of the BJP. The FIR was lodged eight years ago in 2016, after which both the CM and the L-G appointed me as the Chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women twice. The case was completely fake on which the high court put a stay for 1.5 years,” Maliwal wrote in a detailed post on X.
In 2016, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) filed a charge sheet against Maliwal, accusing her of making unlawful appointments in the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) and alleging that she showed favouritism towards AAP workers.
“According to them, until I filed a complaint against Bibhav Kumar, I was ‘Lady Singham’ and today I have become a BJP agent,” Maliwal asked.
“The entire troll army was deployed against me just because I spoke the truth. Everyone in the party is being called and told to send Swati’s personal video if they have one, as it has to be leaked. They’re putting my relatives’ lives in danger by tweeting their details, including their car numbers,” she alleged.
“Well, lies don’t last long. But in the intoxication of power and in the passion to bring someone down, it should not happen that when the truth comes out, you are not able to look even your family in the eye. I will take you to court for every lie you spread,” she wrote.
Last week, Maliwal filed an FIR against Bibhav Kumar for allegedly assaulting her when she had gone to meet Arvind Kejriwal at his residence in Delhi’s Civil Lines area on May 13. The police have taken Kumar into custody.
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