NEW DELHI: At 8pm inside AICC headquarters, party managers replaced the usual four chairs behind the dais with seven, one strategically placed ahead of the other six. The day’s developments in the Supreme Court suggested the drama was far from over and former finance minister P Chidambaram could well surface at the party headquarters.At 8.15pm, a battery of Congress seniors trooped in. Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad , Mallikarjun Kharge , Salman Khurshid , Abhishek Singhvi , Kapil Sibal , Vivek Tankha and organisation secretary K C Venugopal occupied the dais. But the middle chair remained empty. A minute later, Chidambaram, dressed in a white shirt and black pants, walked into the room smiling.Over the next few minutes, flanked on either side by his lawyers and party colleagues, Chidambaram read out his brief statement, ostensibly to “dispel the concern and confusion” over events of the last 24 hours, and to respond to allegations that he had gone “missing”.“I would choose liberty, if asked to make a choice between life and liberty,” he said. He said that in the INX Media case neither he nor any family member was accused of any offence and that he was a victim of “lies spread by pathological liars”.“In fact, there is no chargesheet filed by either the CBI or the ED before a competent court. Moreover, the FIR recorded by the CBI does not impute to me any wrongdoing. Yet, there is a widespread impression that grave offences have been committed and my son and I have committed those offences. Nothing can be further from the truth,” he said.The former minister also said he was working with his lawyers and “preparing papers” during the time he could not be traced. “I was aghast that I was accused of hiding from the law; on the contrary, I was seeking the protection of the law. I was accused of running away from justice; on the contrary I was engaged in the pursuit of justice,” he said.Chidambaram said he shall walk with a “clear conscience and my head held high”, that he would respect the law “even if it is applied with an unequal hand by the investigating agencies”, and “pray that the investigating agencies will also respect the law”.He ended his under-six-minute statement by putting his faith in the “wisdom of the judges” and said he hoped “that the lamp of liberty will shine bright and illuminate the whole country”.The former minister then waved aside posers from the media and was huddled out of AICC headquarters accompanied by Singhvi and Sibal.There was more drama in store at his residence as CBI officials scaled the walls of his residence to enter the house after attempts to walk in through the main gate were unanswered. Chidambaram emerged at 9.45pm after nearly an hour. He was then whisked away in a vehicle, seated between two officials in the rear seat, under arrest after two days of high drama.