Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sept 5: The Central Bureau of Investigation on Monday described as “mischievous and misleading” a claim by the Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia that one of its officers had been driven to suicide by the pressure to frame the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader in the “false excise case.”
Earlier in the day, Sisodia had said he had “found that [Deputy Legal Advisor in CBI, Jitendra] Kumar was being pressurised to build a false case against me in a wrong manner and pressure was being built to arrest me… he committed suicide under pressure.”
Sisodia was referring to Jitendra Kumar, a Deputy Legal Advisor in CBI, who was found dead at his south Delhi home on Thursday. According to Sisodia, Kumar was under immense pressure to trap him in the excise case.
“A CBI officer was pressured to frame me in a false excise case. He could not take the mental pressure and died by suicide two days ago. This is really unfortunate, I am deeply hurt,” Manish Sisodia said at a press conference. “I want to ask PM why officers are being pressured so much that they are forced to take such extreme steps. Arrest me if you want, but don’t destroy families of your officers,” added the Deputy Chief Minister, who has been named an accused by the CBI in an alleged liquor scam in Delhi.
The CBI in a statement said, “CBI strongly refutes this statement by Shri Sisodia. It is clarified that the gentleman officer Late Shri Jitendra Kumar was in no way connected with the investigation of this case. He was Deputy Legal Advisor in charge of prosecution; in which capacity he was supervising prosecutors who are conducting the trial of already charge-sheeted cases in Delhi. Further, as per the Delhi Police, which is conducting an inquest into the death, the officer has not held anyone responsible for his death in his suicide note.”
To Sisodia’s claim the CBI has “nearly” given him a clean chit after not finding anything in the raid and search of this house and bank locker, the probe agency said the excise policy case is under investigation.
“As such no clean chit has been given to any of the accused. The mischievous and misleading statement of Shri Sisodia is an attempt to divert attention from the ongoing investigation in Delhi Excise Policy case, and also amounting to interference in the inquest proceedings into the death of the gentleman officer,” the agency added in the statement.
In August, the CBI had raided the Delhi residence of Sisodia after it registered an FIR to investigate alleged irregularities in the formulation and execution of the AAP Government’s excise policy brought out in November 2021 but scrapped a year later.