Saurabh Bharadwaj alleges coercion by ED

New Delhi: On Tuesday, ED officials searched AAP Delhi state president Saurabh Bharadwaj’s residence for nearly 20 hours. A day later, Bharadwaj alleged that the officials pressured him to sign statements doctored to suit their narrative, calling the operation a politically motivated exercise that yielded “zero results.”

Bharadwaj claimed that he cooperated fully with the investigation, but complained only when the officers attempted to discard portions of his written statement and replace them with a version prepared by them. He further alleged that the draft was shared externally using his home Wi-Fi before being returned with “corrections”. Terming the ED’s behavior as “suspicious,” he demanded a forensic probe of their laptop and his own home printer to establish evidence of tampering. “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. These are ED’s characteristics — coercion, threats, blackmail,” he stated

According to Bharadwaj, the ED seized only two documents from his home: his election affidavit and a Health Department filing in the Delhi High Court, both of which are public records. He questioned how such documents could be classified as “incriminating evidence.” The AAP leader linked the raid to a wider “conspiracy” allegedly involving Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor, a charge the L-G’s office has previously denied.

Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva dismissed Saurabh Bharadwaj’s press conference as “pure drama,” accusing AAP of theatrics to evade corruption probes. He said Bharadwaj might be better suited as a scriptwriter than politician.

While Bharadwaj’s claims cannot be independently verified yet, they raise fresh questions about procedural transparency in high-profile investigations.