Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo Arvind Kejriwal was administered insulin in Tihar jail on Monday night after his blood sugar level shot up to 320. The ideal range should be between 70 and 100.
The AAP leader, a diabetes patient, criticised the Tihar jail administration for allegedly failing to provide him with insulin despite his repeated requests.
Kejriwal’s accusations were met with a rebuttal from the Tihar jail administration, which claimed that during a video consultation with specialists from AIIMS, neither the issue of insulin nor its necessity was raised, NDTV reported.
“Today it is clear that the Chief Minister was right, he needed insulin. But the officials under the BJP’s central government were deliberately not treating him. Tell me BJP people! If insulin is not needed then why are you giving it now? Because the whole world is cursing them,” Delhi Minister and AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj said in a statement after Kejriwal was given an insulin shot.
Earlier, a Delhi court had directed AIIMS to form a medical board to assess Kejriwal’s medical needs, particularly regarding insulin. The court highlighted discrepancies between the Delhi Chief Minister’s dietary regimen which consisted of home-cooked food and doctor-prescribed diet.
In a letter to the Tihar jail superintendent on Monday, Kejriwal rejected the jail administration’s claim that the issue of insulin was never raised by him in his consultations with the doctors. Kejriwal insisted that he had raised the issue of insulin demand persistently over the course of 10 days.
“I showed my high sugar levels to every doctor who came to see me. I showed them that there were three peaks in the sugar level every day — between 250-320,” Kejriwal said in his letter.
The AAP supremo is currently under judicial custody at the Tihar Jail till April 23, when the next hearing will take place.
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The AAP has alleged that the Tihar administration withheld insulin from Kejriwal, alleging a conspiracy to harm him.
The insulin row further escalated after the Enforcement Directorate alleged last week that Kejriwal had been eating mangoes, aloo puri and sweets daily in an effort to raise his blood sugar level and create a ground for a medical bail.
Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva has claimed that AAP leaders aimed to generate public sympathy for Kejriwal’s health during the Lok Sabha elections.
“No doubt Arvind Kejriwal is a diabetic but his sugar is under control in jail as he didn’t raise demand for insulin in the video consultation with the doctors of AIIMS,” Sachdeva said.
The Delhi Chief Minister was arrested on March 21 by the ED in connection with a money-laundering case linked to the Delhi government’s now-scrapped excise policy and has been lodged in Tihar jail since April 1. The Delhi High Court will hear Kejriwal’s petition challenging the summonses issued to him by the probe agency on May 15.