Chandigarh, June 26 (IANS) BJP national General Secretary Tarun Chugh on Thursday slammed former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann for “weaponising state agencies” to arrest Shiromani Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia.

“This is pure political vendetta. Kejriwal apologised to Majithia in 2018 for levelling baseless and unfounded charges on drugs, if that apology was genuine, how is it that Majithia has become an accused today? That exposes Kejriwal’s hypocrisy,” Chugh said in a statement.

After a Delhi court has prima facie found Kejriwal guilty of corruption and told him that he does not deserve to occupy the Chief Minister’s chair, Kejriwal “is now running his ‘danda tantra’ in Punjab”.

He said Punjab “is sliding into a full-blown police state. On the 50th anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, Kejriwal has revived its very spirit, crushing dissent on the diktats of one authoritarian mind”.

He accused the Mann government of “net-casting for small fish” and opposition voices while letting the real drug kingpins roam free.

Calling the much-hyped ‘Yuddh Nashiyan Virudh’ drive a “PR stunt designed to muzzle the opposition”, Chugh asserted that whatever the truth in the Majithia case, it must be placed before the public transparently, without abusing the machinery of the state.

He urged all opposition leaders in Punjab to speak out against this tyranny and appealed to the people of Punjab to “rise and uproot such unconstitutional, dictatorial forces”.

“This land once defied the Emergency,” Chugh said. “It must do so again.”

The Punjab Vigilance Bureau on Wednesday arrested Akali Dal leader and former Minister Bikram Singh Majithia from his residence in a posh locality in Amritsar city on charges of laundering more than Rs 540-crore drug money.

Investigations by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the police probing the first information report (FIR) of 2021 and the Vigilance Bureau revealed massive laundering of drug money facilitated by Majithia, the government said.

Preliminary investigations revealed that more than Rs 540 crore drug money has been laundered through several ways, including a huge unaccounted cash of Rs 161 crore deposited in bank accounts of companies controlled by Majithia, channelisation of Rs 141 crore through suspected foreign entities and excess deposition of Rs 236 crore without disclosure or explanation in company financial statements.

–IANS

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