On Monday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had made serious allegations that he had heard some judges claiming that their phones were being tapped. The allegation was made in presence of Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who quickly rubbished the allegations.
While making the allegations, Arvind Kejriwal had added a rider “I don’t know if this is true”, which is in line with his trademark “is this true?” style of posting messages on Twitter when he wants to circulate any unverified information or rumour.
Perhaps this “Is this true?” style has been adopted by Kejriwal to escape defamation cases that he has been facing due to his earlier allegations. The other strategy adopted, especially by party leaders like Ashutosh, is to credit some unverifiable information to “sources”.
But that’s not proving to be enough for Arvind Kejriwal in the latest case. Taking cognizance of his allegations, Delhi Police has written a letter to the AAP supremo to let them know about the details of the information he has.
“Phone tapping is an extremely serious matter and is not allowed without due authorization after following strict procedures mandated under law,” the letter written to Arvind Kejriwal reads.
“Please let us know of any incident or case of phone tapping that you have referred to in the course of your speech. We would also appreciate if you could inform us the source on which you base your allegations so that appropriate action can be initiated in the matter,” the letter concludes.
It should be noted that most people, including former judges and even the Congress party – which usually sings in tune with Kejriwal over allegations against the Modi government – had said that Arvind Kejriwal should provide proof before making such serious allegations about independence of judiciary.
Now the ball is in Kejriwal’s court and he has to respond to Delhi Police’s request of providing information. But given the track record of AAP supremo, it appears that he will use this opportunity to make another allegation.
Most probably, Kejriwal will claim that Narendra Modi is using Delhi Police to put pressure on him to reveal names of judges who could be targeted by the centre. We will wait for that tweet.
