India Against Corruption, the umbrella organization led by activists Arvind Kejriwal and Anna Hazare, has said that it seems to have foiled a ‘sting operation’ when it discovered Mufti Samoon Qasmi allegedly recording its meetings on his phone.
It claimed that Qasmi’s reaction to the media — in which blasted the leadership for ‘turning communal’ — immediately after he was told to go seemed to indicate a deeper conspiracy to defame the movement.
It said that it found recordings of personal conversations that took place between various members during the lunch time on Qasmi’s phone.
“It was core committee member Gopal Rai who caught Qasmi fiddling with his cell phone and when asked, Qasmi refused to show his phone and it was only after much persuasion that he handed over the phone to Bhibav, who found many recording of the proceedings in it. On finding the recordings many members asked Qasmi to leave.
“In this entire episode Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodiya didn’t utter a word. Ironically Qasim attacked both Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodiya as soon as he came out of the meeting.
“The incident clearly shows the script to attack Arvind and Manish was written by those who had asked Qasmi to carry out the sting operation much before the core committee meeting started. If completed, without being caught, Qasmi would have made the same allegation which he made after being caught by the members,” India Against Corruption said.
India Against Corruption, in a statement, pointed out that its meetings — held at its Noida office — are not held behind closed doors and anyone can walk in and attend them.
“The core committee meeting is never done in secrecy and many times people who are not part of the committee sit in the meeting. But to record the proceedings secretly and on being caught raise hue and cry certainly raises suspicion,” it said.
“We are not against transparency. In fact our struggle has been of truth and transparency against the corrupt. In the core committee meeting the discussion was about how to struggle against corruption and the corrupt and if the details of the meeting would have been leaked it would have only benefitted the corrupt.
“It appears that some vested interests were conducting a sting operation through Mufti Samoon Qasmi to defame those people involved in the anti-corruption movement in India,” it added.
