ED at Kejriwal's house, AAP says agency preparing to arrest Delhi CM

Delhi minister Saurabh Bharadwaj said that the ED is conducting raids at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's house after the news broke that the probe agency is at his residence with a search warrant.

'Preparations are on to arrest Kejriwal', the AAP minister said.

An Enforcement Directorate team reached Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence onThursday evening shortly after the high court refused to grant him protection from coercive action in an excise policy-linked money laundering case.

They said the agency team went to Kejriwal's residence to serve him a summons in the case. The team also informed the staff at the chief minister's residence that it has a search warrant, they said.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief had earlier skipped multiple summonses of the agency in the case.

Earlier in the day, a Delhi High Court bench of Justices Suresh Kumar Kait and Manoj Jain refused to grant Kejriwal any protection from coercive action in the case.

The bench listed the AAP leader's application for further consideration on April 22 when his main petition challenging the summons is fixed for hearing, and asked the Enforcement Directorate to file its response.

The case pertains to alleged corruption and money laundering in formulating and executing the Delhi government's excise policy for 2021-22, which was later scrapped.

AAP leaders Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh are in judicial custody in the case.

Kejriwal's name has been mentioned multiple times in the charge sheets filed by the ED. The agency has alleged that the accused were in touch with Kejriwal for formulating the excise policy that resulted in undue benefits to them in return for which they paid kickbacks to the AAP.

(with PTI inputs)