Seeking to become the judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one, Kejriwal absolves Rajendra and by extension, himself of all real or perceived guilt.

Arvind Kejriwal, once India’s knight in shining armour against corruption, has come a full circle.

The Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) chief rose to power riding a wave of support from the suffering underclass who were at the receiving end of a systemic, endemic corruption and in Kejriwal, had seen a man willing to clean up the system.

In an ironic twist, the Delhi chief minister now finds himself outraging against a CBI raid on one of his top babus, a man against whom there are serious allegations of impropriety and financial misconduct.

In July this year, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) forwarded a charge of corruption against Rajendra Kumar, Kejriwal’s principal secretary, to the CBI.

It is alleged that Kumar had benefitted one company in the tender process for purchasing of computers. Kumar is also alleged to have formed benami companies to allot government work and appointed his relatives as directors in many of these firms.

Following 14 raids in different locations including Rajendra Kumar’s office in Delhi secretariat on Tuesday morning, CBI sources said Rs 13 lakh cash and foreign currency worth Rs 3 lakh have been recovered from Kumar and also from another person. It said Rs 2.4 lakh was found from Kumar’s residence along with papers of three immovable properties.

It is to be noted here that Kumar, a 1989 batch IAS officer, was appointed principal secretary to Kejriwal in February when AAP came to power for the second time. He was also secretary to Kejriwal during his previous 49-day stint as chief minister.

It is incredible to suggest, therefore, that Kejriwal was completely in the dark about serious charges of corruption against his favourite babu, both of whom go back a long way.

Going by the crusader-against-corruption image that Kejriwal is so fond of projecting, this would have been a marvelous opportunity for the Delhi chief minister to show that he walks the talk on graft. In one fell swoop, Kejriwal would have silenced his critics who accuse him of giving birth to a stillborn Lokpal Bill that makes a mockery of the original Bill which he fought for in 2011 and even the one over which he once ended up resigning as Delhi chief minister.

Unfortunately, Kejriwal seems to be so taken in the by the shadow-boxing against favourite enemy Narendra Modi that not only has he lost the opportunity to redeem his image, he has exposed himself as a politician who despite holding a high office, is callous with facts.

Asking a rhetorical question five hours after he dramatically posted on Twitter that “CBI is raiding my office”, he fired another 140-character missile: “My question -had Rajender not been my secretary, then wud he have been raided? No. Then who is the target- Rajender or me ? (sic)”

Seeking to become the judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one, Kejriwal absolves Rajendra and by extension, himself of all real or perceived guilt.

By attempting to turn a case of corruption against a government bureaucrat into a personal battle against Modi, Kejriwal trivializes the issue of corruption in governance (a plank on which he was voted to power) and legitimizes the fear that he may have already become a propagator of the very system which he sought to purge in previous violent fits of righteous indignation.

Not just that.

Kejriwal’s claim that the Centre has initiated “an undeclared emergency” — on which he got vociferous support from Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee, who is battling Saradha Scam, and from the Congress which is locked in the National Herald imbroglio — is as fantastic as it is ridiculous.

If CBI raid on a bureaucrat against whom a corruption probe is under way is a breach of federal structure, then it would be better to simply do away with India’s legislative and judiciary. Thereupon all cases of law and order should be released in the political arena so that ugly mud-slinging freely occupy the social media and news feed.

It is unclear whether Kejriwal is speaking the truth when he alleged that the CBI raided his office and sealed it.

Following his tweets which saw an enormous political furore, CBI made it clear that the agency had only searched the office of Rajendra Kumar, the principal secretary as part of an investigation into alleged corruption.

In Parliament, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley clarified that “No one from the CBI has entered Kejriwal’s room, the case is not connected to his tenure. The search is against an officer.”

In the face of allegations and counter-allegations, let’s also remember that Kejriwal had, during Railways’ demolition of Shakur Basti area in west Delhi last Saturday, alleged that a six-month-old child had died in the incident.

However, according to police sources and post-mortem report from Sanjay Gandhi Hospital, the girl had died at least three hours prior to the demolition drive. The girl’s father, too, has come forward and in a police statement, made it clear that his daughter’s death was unconnected to the drive.

In the clear pattern that emerges, Kejriwal finds no moral obstruction in using smokescreens and half-truths in making a political point. Last year, during a similar moral outrage on Twitter, Kejriwal had complained about personal abuse that he was subjected to.

One year later, in calling the prime minister of the country a “coward” and a “psychopath” for a CBI raid on his bureaucrat and labeling the finance minister a “liar”, Kejriwal has touched spectacularly new lows that may yet set a dubious “benchmark” for adversarial politics in India.