Fact Check: Viral courtroom conversation of CM Kejriwal with ASG Raju is fake

Hyderabad: On the expiry of his six days of Enforcement Directorate (ED) remand in the liquor policy case, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal himself made his submission before special CBI Judge Kaveri Baweja of Rouse Avenue Courts on March 28. Addressing a Delhi Court, he said that the ED’s mission is to implicate him and that the Central agency want to crush the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The court extended Kejriwal’s ED custody for four days till April 1.

An alleged conversation between Kejriwal and additional solicitor General Raju is doing the rounds on social media. The statement posted by the X handle AAP Ka Mehta reads, “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 based on my statement? Judge and ASG both went quiet…Savage. (sic)” (Archive)

Another X user also posted the alleged conversation claiming the same. (Archive)

Fact Check

NewsMeter, in its investigation, found that Kejriwal did not make the viral statement while addressing the court.

We ran relevant keyword searches and came across the live publishing of a courtroom exchange by the digital media outlet Live Law on March 28 on its X profile.

In the exchange, we found Kejriwal addressing the court and defending himself in the Liquor policy case. He alleged that the ED investigation had two objectives—one, to create a smokescreen in front of the country that the Aam Aadmi Party was corrupt and did the scam and two, to do an ‘extortion racket’ for collecting money. However, we did not find him saying ‘Will ED arrest Modi and Shah based on his statement that he gave 100 crores to them?’

We also came across reports by Live Law and NewsLaundry from March 28, which reported the word-to-word Kejriwal’s address to the court. However, we did not find the alleged statement reported by both media outlets.

Next, we found an audio recording of Kejriwal’s submission to the court posted by a user on March 28. After listening to it completely we found out exactly as reported by the above media outlets.

Money Control’s reporter Thyagarajan Narendran (Archive) and BBC’s reporter Umang Poddar (Archive), quote posted the posts making the claim and said the viral exchange never occurred in the court.

NewsMeter contacted Aaj Tak reporter and Live Law reporter who was present in the court during the hearing, who confirmed that the alleged exchange did not occur in the court. The Aaj Tak reporter said he was present beside Kejriwal in the court and no such conversation occurred.

Hence, we conclude that the viral courtroom exchange attributed to Delhi CM Kejriwal is fake.