Before Chandrababu Naidu arrest, other high-profile Oppn leaders held in recent years: Sisodia to Azam Khan to Chidambaram

It is not the first time though that an Opposition leader has been arrested, especially in connection with allegations of irregularities or corruption. And, like in the cases of other Opposition leaders’ arrests by various state and central agencies in different parts of the country, the TDP has also said that Naidu’s arrest is the result of a “political vendetta”.

For the past 45 years, I have selflessly served Telugu people. I am prepared to sacrifice my life to safeguard the interests of Telugu people. No force on earth can stop me from serving Telugu people, my #AndhraPradesh and my motherland.

Posted at 6 AM, 09th September 2023 pic.twitter.com/721COYldUd

— N Chandrababu Naidu (@ncbn) September 9, 2023

Here is a look at some of these high-profile arrests in recent years.

Manish Sisodia

In February this year, senior Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Manish Sisodia, who was then Delhi Deputy CM, was arrested by the CBI over alleged irregularities in the “framing and implementation” of the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy. Sisodia has been charged with providing undue benefits to liquor licence-holders in lieu of “kickbacks” and “commissions”, which were allegedly used by the AAP in the Punjab Assembly elections held in February 2022. He was also later taken into custody by the ED.

Sisodia and the AAP have, however, denied the allegations. Calling it a “black day for democracy”, the party claimed the case was “politically motivated” against the ruling BJP’s opponents. The AAP’s national convener and Delhi CM, Arvind Kejriwal, said, “Manish is innocent. His arrest is dirty politics.”

The AAP held several protests across the country over Sisodia’s arrest. Several hundred party workers gathered around the party’s headquarters in Delhi amid a heavy police presence, with more than a hundred protesters taking to streets in Mumbai and Chandigarh.

Sisodia continues to be in prison. His bail applications have been rejected by the Delhi High Court.

After registering another FIR, the CBI also investigated Sisodia’s role in the Delhi government’s Feedback Unit, which was allegedly used by the AAP government for snooping and collecting political intelligence.

Satyendar Jain

In May last year, the ED arrested another senior AAP leader and then Delhi health and PWD minister in an alleged money-laundering case. The case is based on an FIR lodged against Jain in 2017 under the Prevention of Corruption Act, which accused him of having allegedly laundered money through four companies linked to him.

The party had then also claimed that Jain’s arrest was politically motivated to “defame the AAP in the Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections”.

Jain was granted bail by a court on medical grounds earlier this year, which has been extended to September 12.

Jignesh Mewani

In April 2022, Dalit activist-turned-politician Jignesh Mewani was arrested by the Assam Police in Gujarat after a BJP leader had filed a complaint over a purported tweet from his account against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing the latter of allegedly idolising Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse. The police said Mewani, an independent MLA at the time who later joined the Congress, was charged with attempting to disturb “public tranquility and peace”.

After his arrest, Mewani was taken to Guwahati by flight and then by road to Kokrajhar district, where a local court sent him to police custody for three days.

Condemning Mewani’s arrest, Rahul Gandhi had tweeted: “Modiji, you can try to crush dissent by abusing the state machinery. But you can never imprison the truth.”

A few days later, Mewani was granted bail by a Kokrajhar court, but was re-arrested in a fresh case filed in Barpeta district on the basis of a complaint by a woman police officer who accused him of “assaulting” her and “outraging her modesty”. A court in Barpeta later granted him bail and pulled up the state police for lodging a “false FIR” and “abusing the process of the court and the law”. It also warned the Assam Police against “converting our hard earned democracy into a police state”.

Nawab Malik

In February 2022, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and then Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik was arrested by the ED in an alleged money laundering case connected to underworld don and terrorist Dawood Ibrahim.

Then Leader of the Opposition Devendra Fadnavis had alleged that Malik had struck a property deal with the 1993 Mumbai bomb blast convict Dawood.

The NCP hit out at the BJP, describing Malik’s arrest as another instance of “misuse of power” and a “pressure tactic to silence political opponents”.

After his bail applications were rejected several times by lower courts, Malik was finally granted a two-month interim bail on medical grounds by the Supreme Court in August this year after spending more than a year-and-a-half in custody.

Anil Deshmukh

In November 2021, the ED arrested NCP leader and former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh after interrogating him for 12 hours. The ED arrested him under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, almost six months after it first registered a case against him for allegedly obtaining illegal gratification from bar owners in Mumbai as a minister.

Deshmukh denied these allegations, calling it a “witch hunt”. “On account of a witch-hunt campaign launched at the instance of certain vested inimical interests, some blatantly false allegations have been levelled by those persons who have absolutely no credibility, honour or pride. These unscrupulous persons are themselves knee-deep involved in several rackets of extortion and even murder. The principal person who held the high office of commissioner of police is now a wanted absconding criminal,” he charged.

After spending more than a year in the Arthur Road jail, he was granted bail and released.

Azam Khan

Since the BJP came to power in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, as many as 81 cases have been lodged against senior Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Azam Khan on various charges, including hate speech, land-grabbing, cheating and criminal trespass.

Azam, along with his wife and then SP MLA Tanzeen Fatima and their son Abdullah, were arrested in February 2020 in a case of alleged forgery of the latter’s birth certificate. Azam was released from jail in May 2022. Tanzeen was released from prison in December 2020 and Abdullah in January 2022.

In October 2022, Azam was disqualified from the UP Assembly after he was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison in a 2019 hate speech case, for using improper language against UP CM Yogi Adityanath. In May this year, a sessions court acquitted him in this case. However, the government has appealed in the high court against the acquittal.

In February this year, Azam and his son Abdullah were sentenced to two years in prison in a 15-year-old case over blocking traffic. Abdullah, then an MLA, was subsequently disqualified. He is currently out on bail.

In July this year, a Rampur court sentenced Azam to two years’ imprisonment in a hate speech case registered during the campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He was accused of giving an inflammatory speech targeting Adityanath and the Rampur district magistrate. He is currently out on bail in this case.

D K Shivakumar

In September 2019, after summoning him for questioning, the ED arrested Karnataka Congress leader D K Shivakumar in New Delhi in connection with an alleged money laundering case.

His arrest was linked to a case registered by the ED in 2018 after an Income Tax department investigation in 2017, where Rs 8.83 crore in unaccounted cash was found in Delhi in locations allegedly linked to Shivakumar.

Following the arrest, Shivakumar said, “I congratulate my BJP friends for finally being successful in their mission of arresting me. The IT and ED cases against me are politically motivated and I am a victim of BJP’s politics of vengeance and vendetta.”

Calling his arrest “illegal”, the Congress accused the BJP government of indulging in “punitive actions” against its leaders to divert the attention of the people from its “mismanagement” of the economy.

He was imprisoned in the Tihar jail before the Delhi High Court granted him bail in late 2019.

Shivakumar is currently the Karnataka Deputy CM and state Congress chief.

P Chidambaram

In August 2019, senior Congress leader and former Union minister P Chidambaram was arrested by the CBI in connection with the INX media case. The CBI had registered an FIR in May 2017, alleging irregularities in the Foreign Investment Promotion Board clearance given to the INX group for receiving overseas funds of Rs 305 crore in 2007, when Chidambaram was the Union finance minister.

The CBI personnel had scaled the boundary walls of his New Delhi residence and arrested Chidambaram in full media glare. He was taken into custody soon after he addressed a press conference at the Congress headquarters, where he claimed innocence.

The Congress leadership, including Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, had strongly defended Chidambaram. “(Narendra) Modi’s government using the ED, CBI and sections of a spineless media to character assassinate Mr Chidambaram. I strongly condemn this disgraceful misuse of power,” Rahul had then said.

Chidambaram was given bail more than 100 days after his arrest and was released from Tihar jail in December 2019.

His son Karti, who had also been arrested in the INX case in 2018, called it a political witch-hunt. “Outrageous media leaks are the preferred tactics of the ED. I have nothing to do with INX or the FIPB. All my assets and liabilities are duly declared in statutory and regulatory filings. I have repeated this ad nauseam. I have been raided four times. Appeared for over 20 summons. Each session for a minimum of 10 to 12 hours. Been a ‘guest’ of the CBI for 12 days. There is still no chargesheet for alleged events which apparently took place in 2008 and an FIR in 2017. There is no case,” he had then said.