AAP Delhi State President Saurabh Bharadwaj on Wednesday tore into the BJP’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) drama, unveiling a conclusive proof that Tuesday’s marathon 19–20 hour raid at his home was nothing but a fabricated political operation. Laying out a detailed account of the raid, the AAP Delhi Unit Chief revealed that ED officers pressured him to sign statements doctored to suit their narrative, even discarding his original testimony and replacing it with their version.
The AAP Delhi Unit Chief asserted that nothing incriminating was found at his residence, the raid yielded “zero results,” and demanded a forensic probe of ED Assistant Director Mayank Arora’s laptop and his own home printer, where he said evidence of manipulation still exist.
AAP Delhi State President Saurabh Bharadwaj, during a press conference with him sitting next to his home printer,. stated, “Today I will expose an agency, the Enforcement Directorate, that has been spreading terror in India for several years. With evidence, I will expose how ED officers enter into criminal conspiracies with the central government to falsely implicate innocent politicians.”
Narrating yesterday’s incident, the AAP Delhi Unit Chief said, “Around 7:15 in the morning, just as my daughter was leaving for school, some ED officers came to my house. Let me name them: Deputy Director Ravish Bhardwaj, Assistant Director Mayank Arora, Enforcement Officers Vikas Kumar and Varun Kushwaha, Assistant Enforcement Officer Manish, constables Rajni and Harishankar, along with six CRPF staff and others. We allowed them inside, and they said, ‘Sir, we want to search your house.’ I replied, the house is open, go ahead. The search then began.”
Detailing the search, he said, “They combed through the entire house — cupboards, clothes, everything. The ED team was searching different parts of the house. Assistant Director Mayank Arora and Enforcement Officer Vikas Kumar sat with me and said they needed to record my statement. I agreed, and Mayank Arora opened his laptop and began the process. They had about 43-44 questions, which they asked one by one. I calmly answered all of them. This whole exercise of questioning and answering lasted till 7:00 or 7:15 in the evening.”
The senior AAP leader added, “Around 6 pm, one of their men who was searching the ground floor — the area where my father sits and old papers were stored — suddenly exclaimed that he had found something. The officers’ faces lit up with excitement. They brought it upstairs — it was an affidavit filed by the Health Department before the Chief Justice’s bench in the Delhi High Court, which is a public document. They read it and showed it to me. I said, ‘Great, I was actually looking for this for many days. I didn’t know it was lying in that room.’ I asked them to attach it to my recorded statement as evidence, since it contained many minutes of meetings and my written directions which contradict the allegations made against me in the FIR.”
Saurabh Bharadwaj further added, “At that point they asked another question: what was my responsibility in the delays in hospital infrastructure projects, and whether I discharged my duties properly. I replied: note this down — I became a minister on 9 March 2023, and on 22 March 2023 itself I held my first meeting on hospital delays. I kept holding regular meetings thereafter, giving clear directions to speed up the work. All of this is documented in minutes of meetings.”
Calling out the Lieutenant Governor, he said, “I also dictated a full paragraph to the ED that this entire matter is fabricated and false, and that Delhi’s LG V. K. Saxena has hatched a criminal conspiracy to frame me. I told them I have evidence — audio and video recordings, documentary proof — of how officers were instructed and how they tried to trap me. In the LG’s own office, meetings were held where the Chief Secretary, Health Secretary, Services Secretary who happens to be the wife of the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) chief and other officers were present. I told them I even have evidence of what happened in those meetings. They asked me to hand it over, but I said I will submit it to the court at the appropriate stage, and that was recorded in my statement.”
Explaining what was seized, he shared, “By around 7:45 in the night, the evidence was recorded and a seizure memo (panchanama) was prepared, listing what was recovered. Only two documents were seized from my house. One was the affidavit I had submitted to the Election Commission for the 2025 elections when I contested as an MLA, which contains details of my PAN, Aadhaar, assets and vehicles. Since they had taken away my phone, I asked my wife to bring that affidavit so I could read out the details they wanted. I gave them information from it, but instead, they seized the affidavit itself and wrote in the panchanama that it was an incriminating document.”
Saurabh Bharadwaj asserted, “The affidavit I had submitted to the Election Commission — which is public, available to the whole world, even uploaded on the EC website — that very affidavit has been recorded as incriminating evidence against me. In their seizure memo, they have written that they found a 20-page incriminating document, which is nothing but my election affidavit. The second document they seized was an affidavit filed by the Department of Health in the Delhi High Court, signed by the Deputy Secretary of Health. They recorded both these public documents in the seizure memo and got signatures from the so-called public witnesses.”
He asserted, “Who are these witnesses, the panch? On paper, they are meant to be independent. In reality, they are ED’s own people, who sign wherever ED officers tell them. I have evidence of this too, and I will prove it. This entire practice of producing witnesses in ED raids across the country is a sham, a complete farce. It is nothing but a racket. I will show this with documentary evidence as well. They got the witnesses to sign, ED officers signed, and I signed. Next was my statement.”
Noting ED’s misconduct, the AAP Delhi unit chief said, “If I am lying today, I am ready to go to jail. The truth is that ED’s Assistant Director Mayank Arora shared my statement with someone sitting remote from his laptop, using my home Wi-Fi, through Google Drive or WhatsApp. Whether he shared it with a lawyer, the BJP, some officer, or even the LG’s office, I don’t know. But it was shared right in front of me. This will be established through forensic evidence. I had answered 43 -44 questions, and one additional question was recorded — and then, after the statement was shared, the document came back marked up, with highlighted sections that they wanted me to remove.”
Criticising ED’s methods, he continued, “They told me that under Section 17 of PMLA, my statement can be used against me in court. This is unique — nowhere else in the world does such a law exist. And since the statement is on oath, if I lie, I can be jailed. I told the Assistant Director: this is my statement, on oath. I will decide what goes into it, not you. How can you remove parts of my statement ? He said, ‘Sir, please understand, we also have to look professional.’ I asked what he meant. He replied, ‘I will record only what I find appropriate, not necessarily what you dictate.’ I said, ‘Wonderful. So now even my statement will be decided by ED, and shared with some third party, before being finalised in my name?’”
Describing ED official’s suspicious behaviour, Saurabh Bharadwaj said, “I argued politely. I told him this is not how it works. But he insisted. I suggested: fine, then record that you warned me three times to remove those portions, but I refused, and insisted they remain in my statement. That way you are protected, and I take responsibility. He still refused. Instead, from 8 pm to 2 am, he kept stepping out, making repeated phone calls to someone. The whole country should know — during those six hours, who was he calling? Who was he speaking to for so long? Was he fixing a marriage? Or was he taking instructions on how to manipulate my statement?”
Explaining the intimidation, he added, “All this was done to psychologically manipulate me and my family. They kept creating fear — that I could be arrested that night, that they might take me away. At one point, I even gave my wife the number of my lawyer and told her to speak to him in the morning, if I was taken away. These are ED’s characteristics — coercion, threats, blackmail. They break you down mentally until you agree to sign whatever they want.”
The senior AAP leader stated, “By 2 am, after trying every trick, after creating all the pressure, I finally told them — do what you want, I am going to sleep. I lay down on the floor of my room and slept. But within ten minutes, they returned and said, ‘Sir, let us talk once more, we have prepared a new statement for you.’ They removed whatever parts of my statement they did not like, cut them out on their own, and then asked me to sign.”
He continued, “They even made me speak twice to their Deputy Director, Ravish Bharadwaj, who in a very subtle way tried to convince me, saying: ‘Sir, this is good for you, just agree to what we are saying. We only want your good.’ Officers were also repeating the same thing: ‘We want your good.’ I told them clearly: it is not your job to want my good. My lawyer wants my good. Your real job is only to send me to jail, and I know that. You are standing against me in court, how can I accept your advice? You are no one to advise me.”
“ED claims they raided 13 of my premises. At the very least, tell me where these 13 premises are. Even my family is asking. If you are saying these are my properties, then hand them over to me, let me take possession, let me sell or dispose of them. Or make a power of attorney in my name. What are these mysterious premises,” he asked.
He shared how his daughter reacted: “My daughter asked me, ‘Papa, do you have an office?’ I told her the only office I have is the Party office. She said, ‘No, but I saw pictures of another private office on TV.’ What shamelessness is this? They should drown in shame.”
Saurabh Bharadwaj then challenged the allegations head-on: “I have been an MLA for 11 years. In that time, I must have dealt with at least 300 engineers — JEs, AEs. At least 60 SHOs. In my constituency, across 5–6 police stations, I must have dealt with no fewer than 1,500 contractors. Can even one person come forward and say that Saurabh Bharadwaj took money? Just one person? Anyone saying, ‘He took money for a road, or for installing swings, or for some work.’ Not a single person. And yet, they want to paint me as corrupt. This is a shameless spectacle of lies.”
The AAP Delhi Unit Chief asserted, “Tell me, why will anyone remain honest in this country? Why? You are destroying the very foundation of honesty in India. You are not even allowing an honest man to take credit for his honesty. This is what you are doing — killing whatever self-respect remains in this country. Is this what BJP wants for India?”
He gave the example of his own daughter to show how the BJP is ruining the country. “On Saturday, during my daughter’s Parent-Teacher Meeting, her teacher told me, ‘Your daughter is very good at studies, but I have noticed a disturbing change in her. She stands up in class and lectures that money is everything. If you have money, you have everything; if you don’t, you are nothing. Fame, respect, recognition—none of it matters, only money does.’ My daughter is saying this because today the BJP has created such an atmosphere in this country where honest people are crushed on the streets.
“I still travel in a 14 year-old WagonR, and my bank account barely has ₹22,000–23,000. My MLA pension hasn’t even started yet. I told the ED officers that what they are destroying in this country is the very sense of dignity and self-respect among its people,” he added.
Saurabh Bharadwaj then returned to the ED’s conduct: “The Assistant Director still has the first, full version of my statement in his laptop. I request all of you in the media — put pressure on ED to seize Mayank Arora’s laptop. My full statement is in there, along with the record of how it was changed. That laptop was used to share my statement with some remote person, through my Wi-Fi. This is forensic evidence. It must be placed before the media. My original statement must be retrieved.”
He pointed to tampering of seized documents: “I also want to submit my home printer for forensic examination. That printer was connected to Wi-Fi, and the statements were printed through it. Its memory still contains the print logs. Also, ED stole documents from my house. They found an affidavit filed in Delhi High Court and added it in seizure memo. When they realised it was in my favour — showing that I had done everything possible as a minister — they quietly removed it from the seizure memo. First they made a seizure memo, with 89 pages, and got my and the witnesses’ signatures. That memo included the High Court affidavit. Then, later that night, they prepared another memo, removed the High Court affidavit, took signatures again, and kept the affidavit copy in their own bag. This is how they operate. And these so-called panch — what kind of independent public witnesses are they, if evidence can just be swapped out of the memo?”
Pointing to manipulation during searches, Saurabh Bharadwaj said, “I told the lady present — Sneha Jaiswal, Manager at Punjab and Sind Bank. I asked her, Madam, what does it mean to be a panch or a public witness? It means recording what is actually happening here. Instead, they wrote nonsense like who came at what time, who left, when food was ordered, when a child arrived. They wrote this meaningless rubbish and got the panch witnesses to sign it. But why did they not write about the theft from my house? Why did they not write that they recorded my statement, then changed it, and then tried to force me to sign it — and I refused unless it was my full statement?”
Challenging the process further, he said, “I told the lady — being a panch means recording the actual events here. Record how the High Court affidavit they seized was later removed. Record how I said I will not sign the statement dictated by them, but only my own. What did the panch reply? She said — ‘Sir, he is right, only what is relevant should be written.’ I then told the panch to write this in the seizure memo: ‘As a public witness, I advised Saurabh Bharadwaj to sign whatever ED was asking, because they know better.’ This shows their collusion.”
Recalling his defiance, the senior AAP leader added, “Finally, when nothing worked, I told them — I am ready to go to jail for two years, if not today then tomorrow. Take me if you want, but I will not sign. I even told their Deputy Director over phone — if you want to arrest me, arrest me, but I won’t sign. I said this three times — I am ready to be arrested. Write down that I am not cooperating. But their idea of cooperation is — whatever they say, I must do.
On official documents, he said, “In that statement, I wrote that the documents ED was demanding are all government records, written by me, kept in Secretariat files. I requested them to get these documents officially from the government. I myself had filed RTIs with the Chief Secretary. He replied that these documents don’t even exist — I have that RTI. When I refused to remove that line from my statement, ED officers said they cannot get documents from the government. I asked, then what is your job? Your job is only to raid my house? You can raid my house to seize documents but cannot officially demand them from the government? This exposes the entire game.”
Highlighting conspiracy by the LG, Saurabh Bharadwaj stated, “I have extensive evidence against the LG. If I am arrested in the coming days, my lawyers will hold press conferences and release evidence on social media showing how he hatched a criminal conspiracy against me. Don’t think it is just the lawyers’ statements — my party’s legal cell will expose everything before the world.”
