[The
latest instance of his hostility to Mr. Modi’s administration came Tuesday
after Devpreet Singh, the spokeswoman for the Central Bureau of Investigation, said
that federal investigators had raided the office of a principal secretary in
the Delhi
By Nida Najar
 |
Police officers at the state
government headquarters for
was raided in a corruption investigation. Credit Prakash Singh/Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images
|
Mr.
Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party swept into power in Delhi in February after winning
an overwhelming majority of seats in the state assembly on an anticorruption
platform, a striking blow to the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Mr. Modi.
Mr.
Kejriwal has since pressed for more control over the levers of power in the
capital, including oversight of the police, which are held by the central
government.
The
latest instance of his hostility to Mr. Modi’s administration came Tuesday
after Devpreet Singh, the spokeswoman for the Central Bureau of Investigation, said
that federal investigators had raided the office of a principal secretary in
the Delhi
Their
search was continuing in the early afternoon, and teams were also inspecting
the home of the principal secretary, Rajendra Kumar, according to the Press
Trust of India, a news agency.
But
Mr. Kejriwal said on Twitter that the investigators had raided his office as
well as Mr. Kumar’s and “looked into” files and that their search was motivated
by Mr. Modi.
“When Modi cudn’t handle me politically, he
resorts to this cowardice,” Mr. Kejriwal said on Twitter, calling Mr. Modi “a
coward and a psycopath.”
Ms.
Singh denied that Mr. Kejriwal’s office had been raided.
The
Central Bureau of Investigation opened a case of criminal conspiracy and
criminal misconduct against Mr. Kumar on Monday. He is suspected of helping to
award government contracts to a favored company while he was working in various
positions with the Delhi
In
the past, the Central Bureau of Investigation has been accused of bending to
political interests. In 2013, when the Indian National Congress party was in
power, the Supreme Court said that the agency was “a caged parrot” speaking in
its “master’s voice” and added that it “must know how to stand up against all
pulls and pressures by government and its officials.”
In
comments to reporters, Venkaiah Naidu, the minister of urban development for
the central government, denied that the agency’s searches on Tuesday had been
politically motivated.
“The
C.B.I. do not function under the government — gone are the days of the Congress
party” when the agency’s prerogatives could be misused, he said. “Today the C.B.I.
is an independent organization. The governments do not interfere at all.”
