Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann, AAP parliamentarians, Delhi ministers and hundreds of party supporters were detained by police on Sunday as they protested while their leader Arvind Kejriwal was questioned by the CBI in the liquor policy case.

Chief minister Kejriwal left the CBI headquarters around 8.30pm after being questioned for around nine hours. In the morning, he had visited Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial, Rajghat, before appearing at the CBI office near Lodi Road. Protests took place despite prohibitory orders being imposed near the CBI office. Demonstrations were also held at several traffic junctions in the city.

Kejriwal said in a recorded video: “Looking at this tremendous development work in Delhi, the rest of the country also started to have high hopes that India can become number one in the world. But there are some anti-national forces in the country who do not want schools and hospitals to be built, poor children to receive good education and India to become the number one country in the world…. I want to say to these anti-national forces that you can trouble us Indians as much as you want, but now India will not stop.”

“I have been summoned by CBI today and I will give all the answers with honesty. These people are very powerful. They can send anyone to jail, it does not matter if that person has committed any crime or not,” Kejriwal added.

After returning home, Kejriwal addressed reporters flanked by Delhi minister Atishi and Punjab chief minister Mann. He thanked CBI officers for their hospitality and said he was asked 56 questions for nine-and-a-half hours, beginning from the proposal for a new liquor policy in 2020.

“This case is lies, bogus and dirty politics.... Kattar imandaari (staunch honesty) is our ideology and we will die rather than compromise with it.... This is happening because they (BJP governments) have not been able to work like us (in Delhi) in the last 30 years in Gujarat or Madhya Pradesh,” Kejriwal said.

In response to queries, he said that he was not given any indication whether he may be summoned again.

Kejriwal entered the CBI office around 11am. Delhi minister and AAP’s convenor for its unit in the capital, Gopal Rai, met party leaders in the evening to chalk out a strategy.

While Kejriwal was being questioned, several senior AAP leaders were “detained” by the Delhi police during a sit-in at Archbishop Makarios Marg. The detainees included Rajya Sabha MPs Sanjay Singh and Raghav Chadha, Delhi ministers Saurabh Bharadwaj, Atishi and Kailash Gahlot, AAP spokesperson Adil Ahmad Khan, AAP national secretary Pankaj Gupta, Punjab chief minister Mann and some other ministers in the Punjab government. They have all been released.

“The Delhi police has arrested us for sitting peacefully and is taking us to some unknown place... what kind of dictatorship is this?” Chadha tweeted. “BJP suffers from chronic Kejriwal-phobia.”

“Thirty-two Delhi MLAs and 70 councillors have been arrested in the city and 20 Punjab AAP MLAs have been arrested at the Delhi border,” Rai said at a media conference.

The controversial liquor policy under which Delhi PSUs exited the booze trade lasted eight months until it was withdrawn last July after lieutenant governor V.K. Saxena requested a CBI probe.

Kejriwal’s former deputy Manish Sisodia attributed the losses to the exchequer to last-minute tweaking of the policy by previous LG Anil Baijal. Sisodia was later arrested and is the second Delhi minister after Satyendar Jain who is behind bars in a corruption probe.

The Enforcement Directorate, which also probed the case, didn’t list any ministers as accused, although Kejriwal, Bharat Rashtra Samithi MLC K. Kavitha — the daughter of Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao — and YSRCP parliamentarian M. Sreenivasulu are mentioned in connection with the conspiracy to facilitate liquor cartels.

However, the CBI has named Sisodia as an accused in its FIR, which the AAP blames on political vendetta by the BJP.

Lieutenant governor Saxena has objected to a special session of the Delhi Assembly called on Monday to pass a resolution for a fixed time limit on gubernatorial authorities to take decisions on resolutions passed by legislatures — as the Tamil Nadu Assembly did last week.

The BJP is likely to move a resolution against Delhi Speaker Ram Niwas Goel for participating in Sunday’s protest. Speakers conventionally stay away from party events during their tenure.