Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday asked the Bharatiya Janata Party not to target his family in order to come to power in the state.

“If you want to come to power, then come to power...Don’t do such vicious things and harass our family members,” he said in a speech during the Budget session of the Maharashtra Assembly

His remarks came three days after his brother-in-law, Sridhar Madhav Patankar’s assets worth Rs 6.45 crore were frozen by the Enforcement Directorate, for his alleged involvement in a money laundering case.

“If you want to put us in jail to come to power, put me in jail,” Thackeray added. “I am not scared of my image being ruined. I am what I am, and people know me for it. But what level are they [BJP] going to stoop to?”

Thackeray alleged that the Enforcement Directorate was being misused by the Centre to target Opposition leaders.

“[The] informants are your people, accusers are your people, investigators are your people, even punishment is given by your people,” said Thackeray.

The chief minister said that his government will take a call on Nationalist Congress Party leader Nawab Malik once the court gives a verdict on the allegations of money laundering against him. Malik, a minister in Thackeray’s Cabinet was arrested on February 23 in connection with an alleged money laundering case involving fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim and his aides.

The BJP has been demanding that he be sacked from the state Cabinet.

“If Nawab Malik is Dawood’s right-hand man and he is winning elections and is in power, [how come] the Centre did not know this all this time?” Thackeray questioned on Friday.

The Maharashtra government is a coalition of the Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress. The ruling coalition has long been accusing the BJP-ruled central government of targeting its leaders.

Earlier this month, the Income Tax Department had conducted raids in Mumbai and Pune at offices and homes of three aides of Maharashtra ministers Aaditya Thackeray and Anil Parab.

On February 15, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut had alleged that the Centre was trying to topple the Maharashtra government by using central agencies to target its leaders. A week before that, Raut had alleged that he had been threatened with jail time on money- laundering charges for refusing to help “certain people” topple the Maharashtra government.