Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Apr 23: The jail custody of both the Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and the Telangana Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader K Kavitha were on Tuesday extended till May 7 as the Aam Aadmi Party leader for the first time was administered insulin in the Tihar jail after his blood sugar shot up on Monday night.
Official sources said the blood sugar level of Mr Kejriwal, a type 2 diabetes patient, had spiked to 320, when the ideal range should be between 70 and 100. He was given two units of low dose insulin on Monday evening on the advice of AIIMS doctors, the jail sources said.
The AAP leader, a diabetic, criticised the Tihar jail administration for allegedly failing to provide him with insulin despite his repeated requests. Mr Kejriwal’s accusations were met with a rebuttal from the Tihar jail administration, which claimed that during a video consultation with specialists from AIIMS, neither the issue of insulin nor its necessity was raised.
“Today it is clear that the Chief Minister was right, he needed insulin. But the officials under the BJP’s central government were deliberately not treating him. Tell me BJP people! If insulin is not needed then why are you giving it now? Because the whole world is cursing them,” Delhi Minister and AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj said in a statement.
A city court had directed AIIMS to form a medical board to assess Mr Kejriwal’s medical needs, particularly regarding insulin. The court highlighted discrepancies between the Delhi Chief Minister’s dietary regimen which consisted of home-cooked food and doctor-prescribed diet.
In a letter to the Tihar jail superintendent on Monday, Mr Kejriwal rejected the jail administration’s claim that the issue of insulin was never raised by him in his consultations with the doctors. Mr Kejriwal insists that he had raised the issue of insulin demand persistently over the course of 10 days.
The AAP has alleged that the Tihar administration withheld insulin from Mr Kejriwal, alleging a conspiracy to harm him. Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva has claimed that AAP leaders aimed to generate public sympathy for Mr Kejriwal’s health during the Lok Sabha elections.
“No doubt Arvind Kejriwal is a diabetic but his sugar is under control in jail as he didn’t raise demand for insulin in the video consultation with the doctors of AIIMS,” Mr Sachdeva claimed. The Enforcement Directorate accused Mr Kejriwal of consuming sugary foods regularly, insinuating an attempt to exploit his health for legal advantage. Mr Kejriwal swiftly dismissed these accusations as petty and accused the agency of politicising the issue.
“I showed my high sugar levels to every doctor who came to see me. I showed them that there were three peaks in the sugar level every day — between 250-320,” Mr Kejriwal said in his letter.
“I also showed them that my fasting sugar level was in the range of 160-200 every day. Almost every day, I demanded insulin. Then how could you make such a statement that I never raised the issue of insulin?”
The Delhi Chief Minister was arrested on March 21 by the ED in connection with an alleged money-laundering case linked to the Delhi government’s now-scrapped liquor license scam and has been lodged in Tihar jail since April 1.
Meanwhile, the special judge for the CBI and ED cases at the Delhi Rouse Avenue court Kaveri Baweja extended the judicial custody of both Kejriwal and Ms Kavitha, who was also arrested in connection with the alleged Delhi liquor policy scam, till May 7. Both were produced before the judge through video conferencing on expiry of their remand on Tuesday.
The Delhi Chief Minister has a plea pending in the Supreme Court, in which he has challenged his arrest on March 21 by the Enforcement Directorate on money laundering charges. The court heard the matter on April 15, but denied Mr Kejriwal immediate relief pending a reply from the federal agency. The court is scheduled to hear the plea on April 29.
Earlier the Delhi High Court had rejected the same plea, noting the ED had submitted enough material to back its claim – that Mr Kejriwal was allegedly involved in forming the now-scrapped policy and demanding bribes of ₹ 100 crore used to fund the AAP’s Punjab and Goa election campaigns.
The AAP and Mr Kejriwal have denied all charges, and have counter-accused the BJP leadership of “political vendetta” against a rival before the election. The AAP and the opposition have repeatedly claimed federal agencies – like the Enforcement Directorate – target opposition leaders on instructions from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. The centre has denied this claim.
