Manner of Chidambaram arrest depressing, objectionable: Opposition

Read | Chidambaram asked us to help Karti’s business, make overseas payments: Indrani Mukerjea

“We should not forget that the Indian democracy rests on the four pillars of the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, and the press…We are missing democracy in our country… I will not make any comment on the judiciary… but the media has turned into BJP’s spokesperson. Whatever they (the BJP) are saying, the channels are telecasting,” she said.

CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury told the media, “The law will take its own course, but the manner in which it was done, the drama that ensued was completely objectionable.”

In Chennai, DMK chief M K Stalin termed Chidambaram’s arrest as “political vendetta”. “I saw on TV, the CBI officers scaling the walls (at Chidambaram’s Delhi residence). I consider it an insult to India. It is condemnable,” he told reporters.

Congress leader P Chidambaram was arrested on Wednesday night.

The NCP’s chief spokesperson Nawab Malik alleged that it is the Narendra Modi government’s “model” of “misusing” probe agencies to harass Opposition leaders who speak up against it.

Targeting the government, Congress communication department in-charge Randeep Surjewala said, “The vindictive, selective and malicious manner in which former finance and home minister Chidambaram has been persecuted and prosecuted is nothing short of a brazen personal and political vendetta… Over the last two days, India witnessed the broad daylight murder of democracy and the rule of law by a government hell-bent upon using CBI and ED as personal revenge-seeking departments for the party in power.”

Read | How arguments unfolded between CBI and Chidambaram in court

The BJP hit back, with Union Minister Prakash Javadekar saying the INX media case was a “case of massive corruption”. Attacking the Congress for supporting Chidambaram, he said the party has “united to protect corruption” and that a court’s decision to send him to CBI custody for four days shows a “prima facie case of corruption”.

“The Congress is synonymous with corruption. During the Congress rule, we have seen one scam a day — coal scam, 2G scam, CWG scam, Jeejaji scam, this INX scam, A to Z scams because looting the country was their only mission and the law is now catching up,” he said.

Arguing that the government will not interfere in the work of CBI or any other investigating agency, he said the law will take its own course.