New Delhi: ‘If anything happens to me because of the stress, I hold Nirmala Sitharaman responsible’: This is what Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Somnath Bharti’s wife Lipika Mitra has told a Delhi Court in a statement.
Pointing to instances of her children being bullied and excluded from social events like their classmates’ birthday parties, Lipika Mitra told a Delhi court that due to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s comments at a press conference in May 2024, just days before the general elections, her family had suffered immense damage.
“My children were subjected to humiliation and hurt by their classmates. They are even ostracised by their classmates and till now are being regularly harassed. My son faced physical abuse when he tried to counter some of the false allegations by his friends,” the AAP leader’s wife told the court while pointing out that their daughter was also being treated badly by her classmates and being excluded from social events like birthday parties.
In her statement, Lipika alleged that Sitharaman had attacked Bharti’s family on personal matters in May 2024, adding that her family was maligned at the press conference to gain political leverage.
The statement dated 29 January, was made before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Rouse Avenue District Court. “I got to know after watching her press conference on NDTV and other media channels that she has attacked my family on personal matters which has no connection and no truth.”
Saying that she was “aghast” at the manner in which her name was dragged into it and her husband was maligned to gain political leverage, Mitra added that all of this was done to secure a win for the BJP candidate standing against Bharti at the time when he was a joint candidate for the INDIA alliance.
Mitra also said that media houses like NDTV, along with the print media, had run Sitharaman’s statements without verifying them.
The AAP leader Somnath Bharti’s wife also pointed out that although the charges against Somnath were quashed by the Delhi High Court, and this was reported in the media, Sitharaman brought up the ‘marital discord’ between the couple, even though it “was sorted approximately a decade ago” and they were living together happily with their children.
Lipika Mitra also alleged that the minister made up flimsy allegations to show Bharti in a bad light, including allegations of him physically assaulting a journalist, though the incident was a “figment of her imagination”.
She added that the allegations and online trolling confused non-BJP voters. “Wherever I was going in the public domain, I faced humiliation and pain because of her false/irrelevant utterances. Impact of her false accusations made my husband to lose the election which he lost with least of all the margins on all the 7 seats,” Lipika told the court, adding that after this incident, both her husband and AAP workers had faced humiliating questions from the media and the public owing to the “lies spoken by Mrs. Sitharaman”.
Besides this, she also pointed out that after the press conference, her two children were also exposed to the disturbing lies about their parents which affected them mentally and psychologically.
Finally, Lipika also pointed to the various ailments she suffered such as heart ailments, which caused her to have a bypass surgery in 2022, and said, “In case, anything happens to me because of the stress, I hold Mrs. Sitharaman responsible. Her lies and deceitful statements have not only defamed me and my family but have made our life miserable.”
In May 2025, the court had issued a notice to the finance minister on the plea filed by Lipika, where she claimed that Sitharaman made “defamatory, false, and malicious statements” in a press conference on 17 May 2024 with the sole intention to tarnish the reputation of Bharti and weaken his chances of winning in the 2024 general elections when he contested from the New Delhi Lok Sabha seat.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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So, I find this article long winded and not coming to the point. Does this person accuse Sitharaman of suggesting marital discord and assault on a journalist or is there more?