Jailed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s wife Sunita today entered the political battleground with a fiery speech that attacked the BJP-led central government over allegedly targeting the Opposition with central agencies ahead of the national election.

At a massive rally in Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan where leaders of the Opposition INDIA bloc including Rahul Gandhi, Uddhav Thackeray, Mehbooba Mufti, and Mallikarjun Kharge, among others, attended, Sunita Kejriwal read out a message sent by her jailed husband.

“The people of India stand with Arvind Kejriwal. He can’t be kept in jail forever,” Sunita Kejriwal said today in her first major political speech ever in front of hundreds of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supporters.

“I am not asking for votes from you. I am not asking you to help defeat someone in elections. I am only asking 140 crore Indians to help in taking this country forward,” Sunita Kejriwal said, quoting her husband’s message from jail.

She also gave support to the Opposition INDIA bloc, saying it is not INDIA only by name, but “India is in our hearts”

She then read out six guarantees that Arvind Kejriwal wrote in jail.

“First, there will be no power cuts across the country. Second, electricity for the poor across the nation will be free. Third, every village will have a good school where children from all sections of society will get quality education. Fourth, every village will have a mohalla clinic, and every zilla will have government multi-speciality hospital. Fifth, farmers will get good minimum support price per the Swaminathan report. And sixth, the people of Delhi have been treated unfairly for many years. We will end this injustice. The people of Delhi will get statehood,” Sunita Kejriwal said.

“We will fulfil all these guarantees in five years,” she added.

Arvind Kejriwal, his former deputy Manish Sisodia, and Sanjay Singh are in the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) custody over alleged money laundering in framing the now-scrapped Delhi liquor policy.

At the rally today, the Opposition spoke strongly against what it called the BJP’s misuse of central agencies such as the ED, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and the income tax department.

“What wrong has Kejriwal done? He has improved Delhi’s education, helped people. Had people not happy with him, he would not have been leading Delhi,” former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said.

Kalpana Soren, the wife of former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, who is currently in jail, also attended the rally.

Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray attacked the BJP over the electoral bonds issue, calling the ruling party “Bhrasht Janata Party”. “It has emerged that the BJP is the most corrupt party. It is the Bhrasht Janata Party. Their real face has been exposed before the people,” he said at the rally.

Taking a swipe at the Opposition event, BJP MP Sudhanshu Trivedi said the event is actually about saving dynastic families in politics, news agency ANI reported. “It’s not ‘Loktantra Bachao’ rally but in reality, it is ‘Parivar bachao, bhrashtachar chhupao’ rally,” Mr Trivedi said.

At least 5,000 Indians are being reportedly held against their will in Cambodia and are being forced to scam Indians back home online. The sheer scale of the fraud – the Centre pegs the proceeds of crime generated over the past six months at a whopping Rs 500 crore – prompted the two countries to join forces to bring it all down.

“We have seen the media reports on Indian nationals stuck in Cambodia. Our Embassy in Cambodia has been promptly responding to complaints from Indian nationals who were lured with employment opportunities to that country but were forced to undertake illegal cyber work,” the Ministry of External Affairs said, adding that around 250 Indians have been “rescued and repatriated” so far.

According to media reports, those trapped in Cambodia were forced to scam people back home in India and extort money by posing as law enforcement officials and telling the potential victims that suspicious things were found in parcels shipped by them.

The police became aware of this massive scam late last year when a senior central government employee claimed he was defrauded of over Rs 67 lakh and filed a complaint. Odisha’s Rourkela Police busted a cyber-crime syndicate on December 30 and arrested eight people allegedly involved in moving people to Cambodia.

“We arrested eight persons from different parts of the country and have prima facie evidence against multiple people involved in the scam. We issued Look Out Circulars against 16, following which the Bureau of Immigration detained two men – Harish Kurapati and Naga Venkata Sowjanya Kurapati – at the Hyderabad airport after they landed from Cambodia,” an officer said, the Indian Express reported.

The Modus Operandi

Stephen, one of the men rescued from Cambodia, has an ITI degree. When the coronavirus pandemic struck, he did some computer courses, he told The Indian Express, detailing the racket’s modus operandi.

“An agent in Mangaluru offered me a data entry job in Cambodia. There were three of us, including one Babu Rao from Andhra Pradesh. At the immigration, the agent said we were going on a tourist visa, which made me suspicious,” he told Express.

The three were taken to an office in Cambodia where they were interviewed, Stephen said, adding that only two of them could clear it. The boss was Chinese, while a Malaysian helped translate for them, he said.

“They tested our typing speed among other things,” he said. “It was only later that we found out that our job was to look for profiles on Facebook and identify people who can be scammed. The team was Chinese, but a Malaysian translated the instructions to English,” he added.

A Day In The Lives Of Cyber Slaves

Forced to pose as women with fake social media profiles and fake photos, the men were given daily targets, and punishment for not meeting them. This is how the recruits would spend their days in a country they were lured to with the “promise” of a better job.

The “cyber slaves” would go without food and rest if they failed to meet their daily targets, the Express report quoted Stephen as saying.

“We had to create fake social media profiles with pictures of women sourced from different platforms. We were told to be careful while picking the photos,” he said.

“A “South Indian woman” would trap someone in the north to avoid raising any suspicion. We had targets and if we didn’t meet them, we would not get food or be allowed to go to our rooms. Finally, after a month and a half, I contacted my family and with the help of some local politicians, they managed to speak to the Embassy,” he said.

How Were The Indians Scammed

The accused took the men, or the potential scammers, to Cambodia on the pretext of jobs, Rourkela’s police official Upasana Padhi told The Indian Express.

Once there, the men were made to join the companies that indulged in defrauding people, she said. These companies would take away the passports, making it impossible for them to leave, and force them to work 12 hours a day, she added.

“If anyone refused to do what is asked of him, he would be tortured by way of physical assaults, electric shocks, solitary confinement, etc. Many Indians not willing to engage in such scams are trapped there. We are trying to identify, contact, and bring them back through proper channels,” Ms Padhi said.

The scammers would pose as women on dating apps and chat with the potential targets. “After some time, they would convince the target to invest in cryptocurrency trading. Many were duped in India this way,” she said.

According to the Rourkela Police, the agents got the men to join another company that focused on investment scams in October 2023. “This company lured people to invest in fake stocks. They also created a fake online app,” the officer said.

The police have gathered several key pieces of information, including the location of the fraud companies, their operatives, their modus operandi, and their management hierarchy, Ms Padhi said.

They have also identified three high-level operatives of Indian origin and one high-level operative of Nepalese origin. “We intend to arrest key players in this scam with the help of Interpol,” she added.

Supreme Court Judge BV Nagarathna has cautioned against instances of governors sitting indefinitely on bills passed by elected legislatures, referring to the case involving the Punjab Governor.

In her keynote address at the inaugural session of the fifth edition of Courts and the Constitution Conference, held at the NALSAR University of Law here on Saturday, Justice Nagarathna spoke about the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly case as another instance of gubernatorial overreach, where the governor lacked sufficient material to declare the floor test.

“This is not a healthy trend under the Constitution to bring the actions or omissions of the Governor of a state for consideration before constitutional courts,” she said.

“I think I must appeal that the office of a governor, though it is called a gubernatorial post, the governor’s post is a serious constitutional post, the governors must discharge their duties under the constitution in accordance with the Constitution so that this kind of litigation before the law courts is reduced,” Justice Nagarathna added.

She said it was quite embarrassing for the governors to be told to do or not to do a thing.

So, a time has come where they would be now told to discharge their duties as per the Constitution, she said.

Justice Nagarthna’s comments came days after a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud expressed “serious concern” over the conduct of Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi for his refusal to reinduct DMK leader K Ponmudi as a minister in the state cabinet.

Justice Nagarathna also spoke on her dissent on the demonetisation case.

She said she had to dissent against the move by the central government as in 2016, when the decision was announced, the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes comprised 86 per cent of the total currency notes in circulation, and 98 per cent of it came back after they were banned.

In October 2016, the Indian government demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes, purportedly in a blow against the black money.

“I thought it was a way of converting money into white money by this demonetisation because firstly, 86 per cent of the currency was demonetised and 98 per cent of the currency came back and became white money. All the unaccounted money went back to the bank.

“Therefore, I thought it was a good way of getting unaccounted cash accounted. Therefore, this common man’s predicament really stirred me. Therefore, I had to dissent,” the judge said.

The conference heard addresses from judges of the Supreme Courts of Nepal and Pakistan Justices Sapana Pradhan Malla and Syed Mansoor Ali Shah.

Telangana High Court Chief Justice Alok Aradh and NALSAR Chancellor Justice S Ravindra Bhat also spoke at the conference, a press release from NALSAR said. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)