Swati Maliwal, Rajya Sabha MP from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), asserted on Saturday night that CCTV footage from May 13, when she was allegedly assaulted by Arvind Kejriwal’s aide Bibhav Kumar at the Delhi Chief Minister’s residence, has mysteriously “disappeared” and only edited versions of the videos are being released.
Following the incident, Bibhav Kumar was arrested and placed in five-day police custody by Delhi’s Tis Hazari Court on Saturday night.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Maliwal detailed her ordeal, stating, “First, I was brutally beaten by Bibhav. He slapped and kicked me. When I managed to free myself and called 112, he went outside, called security personnel, and began making a video. I was shouting and telling the security that Bibhav had thrashed me brutally.”
Maliwal further claimed that the released video had been edited to only show a brief 50-second segment, omitting significant portions. She added, “The phone has been formatted, and the full video deleted. The CCTV camera footage has also disappeared. This is the height of conspiracy.”
The Delhi Police reported that Bibhav Kumar did not provide his phone password and claimed that his phone had been formatted in Mumbai due to malfunctioning. They stated that the phone’s data needed to be cloned before formatting, necessitating Kumar’s presence in Mumbai for data retrieval.
During a court hearing, Additional Public Prosecutor (APP) Atul Srivastava emphasized the severity of the assault on Maliwal, stating, “She was brutally beaten and attacked in sensitive parts.” Srivastava noted that the DVR footage provided to the police was blank and that Kumar’s iPhone had been formatted, further complicating the investigation.
The APP argued that Kumar’s presence was essential for retrieving the phone’s data and determining his connection to the incident. Kumar’s lawyer, Rajiv Mohan, questioned the delay in filing the case and why Maliwal was not given medical attention when she initially went to the police station but left without filing a complaint.
