Viral Kejriwal-ASG Raju conversation on arresting Modi-Shah a work of imagination; did not happen in court

Delhi chief minister (CM) Arvind Kejriwal was on March 21 arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the Delhi liquor policy case. Kejriwal was initially sent to seven-day ED custody. On March 28, special CBI judge Kaveri Baweja of the Rouse Avenue Court extended the Delhi CM’s remand in ED custody till April 1. Kejriwal personally addressed the court as the ED’s plea for a seven-day extension was being heard.

The Delhi CM told the court that the sole objective of the ED was to implicate him in the liquor policy case. Against this backdrop, an alleged exchange between the Delhi CM and additional solicitor general (ASG) SV Raju has gone viral on social media.

Premium subscribed X (formerly Twitter) user AAP Ka Mehta 🇮🇳 (@DaaruBaazMehta) tweeted the following on March 28:

“Arvind Kejriwal in Court : Why have you arrested me?

ASG Raju : We have a statement against you.

Kejriwal : So if I say I gave 100 crores to Modi and Amit Shah, will you go and arrest them based on my statement?

Judge and ASG both went quiet 😂😂😂

Savage.

#ArvindKejriwal”.

The tweet has received over 15 Lakh views and has been retweeted over 2,500 times. (Archive)

SAVAGE BY ARVIND KEJRIWAL

Arvind Kejriwal in Court : Why have you arrested me?

ASG Raju : We have a statement against you.

Kejriwal : So if I say I gave 100 crores to Modi and Amit Shah, will you go and arrest them basd on my statement?

Judge and ASG both went quiet 😂😂😂…

— AAP Ka Mehta 🇮🇳 (@DaaruBaazMehta) March 28, 2024

A Facebook user named Suman Sengupta shared a post on March 28, where he added a screenshot of a tweet with the viral claim and wrote a caption in Bengali summarizing the above conversation. He also wrote in his post, “This news won’t find its way into any newspaper tomorrow, so I’m sharing it. As many people as possible need to see this, so the chances of it being published in the morning paper will increase….”

The post has been shared over 250 times.

Several other users, on X such as @RoshanKrRaii and @AnkitLal further amplified the alleged exchange by tweeting the same.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Fact Check

To check the authenticity of the viral conversation, we ran a relevant keyword search and came across a report by LiveLaw from March 28 on the address by the Delhi CM. In his submission, Kejriwal said that ED’s motive behind this arrest was to break down AAP. He also talked about Sarath Reddy, who had been initially charged in the case but later received bail after he made a statement against the Delhi CM. Kejriwal also mentioned that Sarath Reddy had donated Rs 55 crores to the BJP after he was arrested.

Further, he mentioned that his name came up only in four statements in the 25,000 pages that the probe agency filed and ED relied solely on the pages that carried statements against him. His address ended with him again alleging that the purpose of this arrest by ED was to “crush” AAP and to “create a smokescreen” and “extort”.

However, we could not find the viral exchange between the Delhi CM and ASG SV Raju.

We also referred to the live thread that LiveLaw shared on X (Twitter) when the court proceedings were taking place on March 28. The viral exchange was not there either.

Next, we came across a report by the Newslaundry on the courtroom exchanges that took place on March 28. Similar to the Live Law report, here, too, we could not find the viral exchange that is being claimed to have happened between the Delhi CM and ASG Raju.

Further, we came across a tweet by Newslaundry journalist Tanishka Sodhi, the reporter who filed the above report. Quote-tweeting the viral claim, she mentioned that she was present in the courtroom and the alleged exchange had not taken place.

Several accounts have tweeted this exchange & it has gone viral.

But as someone who was in court, along with a dozen other reporters, can confirm that it certainly did not happen. Please stop RTing fake news!

Read what actually happened in court here ⬇️ https://t.co/0MiINvvXHh https://t.co/RtxABlerab

— Tanishka Sodhi (@tanishka_s2) March 29, 2024

We reached out to two individuals who were present in the court room — Tanishka Sodhi and another journalist who did not wish to be named. Both confirmed to us that the viral ‘exchange’ between Arvind Kejriwal and ASG Raju was imaginary. Such a conversation did not take place. Tanishka told Alt News, “Nothing of that sort happened. That’s a false tweet that has been circulating and has been retweeted a lot”.

We found tweets from several other journalists such as @UmangPod and @thyagarajan_law who were present in the court refuting the authenticity of the alleged exchange.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We also came across a 9.49-minute-long audio on social media shared as Arvind Kejriwal’s submission in the court on March 28. While Alt News can not independently verify the clip, what is being said in it matches the content of the Delhi CM’s address in various news reports. The alleged exchange does not feature in it.

To conclude, the said conversation between Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and ASG SV Raju in the Rouse Avenue courtroom widely shared by social media users did not actually take place. The tweets are, therefore, false.