A Delhi Court on Friday discharged former Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal in the corruption case related to the alleged liquor policy scam.
Special Judge Jitender Singh of Rouse Avenue Courts also discharged AAP leader Manish Sisodia in the case.
Notably, the judge discharged all 23 accused persons in the matter. The Court, in strong words, rapped the CBI for lapses in investigation and said that the “voluminous chargesheet” has many lacunae not supported by any witness or statement.
The Court said that the CBI failed to make out a prima facie case against Sisodia. The Judge added Kejriwal was implicated without any cogent material.
While pronouncing the verdict, the Court said that the CBI chargesheet running into thousands of pages included material which did not support any of the witness statements. The judge also said there were “misleading averments” in the chargesheet.
The chargesheet had lacunae not supported by any witnesses or evidence, the Court said. While discharging the primary accused- Kuldeep Singh, the judge said it was surprising why he was implicated as the first accused when there was absolutely no material against him.
On Sisodia, who was accused of being the person responsible for formulation and implementation of the liquor policy, the Court said that there was no evidence showing his involvement and neither was there any recovery.
The Court said that the chargesheet suffered from internal contradictions which strikes at the very root of the alleged conspiracy theory.
Regarding Kejriwal, the judge concluded that he was implicated without any cogent material, a position which is inconsistent with the rule of law especially when it concerns a person who holds a constitutional post.
The judge said that in absence of fundamental material without any statement or evidence, the attribution of Kejriwal in the alleged conspiracy cannot be sustained.
The Court has also ordered departmental inquiry against the CBI IO.
For context, Sisodia was in jail for approximately 530 days.
Arvind Kejriwal spent approximately 156 days in jail across two periods. He was finally released on September 13, 2024, after the Supreme Court granted him bail in the CBI case, having already received interim bail in the ED case.
Senior Advocate Rebecca M John along with Advocate Vivek Jain appeared for Manish Sisodia.
Senior Advocate N Hariharan and Advocate Mudit Jain appeared for Kejriwal.
The excise policy is as framed by the Delhi Government to boost revenue and reform liquor trade in 2021, which was later withdrawn after allegations of irregularities in implementation were made and Lieutenant-Governor Vinay Kumar Saxena ordered a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the policy.
This policy – which sought to completely privatise liquor trade in the national capital – was used to grant undue advantage to private entities at the cost of the public exchequer and smacked of corruption, the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation claimed.
Manish Sisodia was first arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in a case related to the excise policy on February 26, 2023 and later by the Enforcement Directorate on March 9, 2023. In the first information report (FIR) registered by the CBI, Sisodia and others have been accused of being instrumental in ‘recommending’ and ‘taking decisions’ regarding the 2021-22 excise policy, “without the approval of competent authority with an intention to extend undue favours to the licensee post tender”.
The central agency also claimed that the AAP leader was arrested because he gave evasive replies and refused to cooperate with the investigation, despite being confronted with evidence.
The AAP chief (Kejriwal) was formally arrested by CBI on June 26, 2024, while he was in custody of the Enforcement Directorate in the money laundering case arising out of the alleged liquor policy scam.
