Manish Sisodia arrest | 9 Opposition leaders write to PM Modi about ‘misuse of Central agencies’

“Interestingly, investigation agencies go slow on cases against opposition politicians who join the BJP,” a letter penned by Opposition leaders stated

Nine Opposition leaders on March 5 wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, expressing concern over the “blatant misuse of Central agencies against the members of the Opposition”, following the arrest of former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia in the excise policy case.

The arrest was a “witch hunt” which suggests that “we have transitioned from being a democracy to an autocracy”, the letter stated.

The signatories of the letter include Chief Ministers K. Chandrashekar Rao, Mamata Banerjee, Bhagwant Mann and Arvind Kejriwal, along with National Conference’s Farooq Abdullah, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, Sena’s Uddav Thackeray, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav.

Congress did not sign the letter. Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi are under investigation by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case related to the National Herald newspaper .

The letter, addressed to the Prime Minister, said, “... After a long witch-hunt, Manish Sisodia was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with alleged irregularity without a shred of evidence against him,” adding that the charges were “outrightly baseless and smack of a political conspiracy”.

The CBI on February 26 evening arrested Mr. Sisodia in connection with alleged corruption in the formulation and implementation of the now-scrapped liquor policy for 2021-22. Mr. Sisodia was sent to judicial remand until March 4, which was later extended for two days after the CBI claimed that Mr. Sisodia was “not cooperating”.

The Opposition leaders wrote that Mr. Sisodia’s arrest only reaffirms what the world was only suspecting — that India’s democratic values had weakened and waned under an authoritarian BJP regime, they alleged.