Jailed former Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi and Aam Aadmi Party leader Manish Sisodia on Thursday moved the Delhi High Court seeking bail in the money laundering and corruption cases in connection with the excise policy case registered against him by the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation.
A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet PS Arora posted the matter for hearing tomorrow if the papers submitted are in order by 12.30 PM today, reported Live Law.
Sisodia approached the court to challenge the rejection of his second bail plea in both CBI and ED cases on April 30. Despite his claims of delays, the trial court, which initially rejected his bail plea in the money laundering case, blamed him for the delay in trial.
Notably, he has been consistently denied bail by the trial court, Delhi High Court, and the Supreme Court in both the ED and CBI cases. Even his review and curative petitions met with dismissal.
The Supreme Court, while dismissing his bail plea last year, advised him to file a fresh application if the trial continued at a sluggish pace. The former deputy CM was initially arrested by the CBI on February 26 and by the ED on March 9 last year.
In the CBI FIR, Sisodia and others are accused of influencing decisions regarding the 2021-22 excise policy without proper authorisation, allegedly to favour certain licensees after the tender process. The CBI claims that Sisodia was arrested due to his uncooperative behaviour during the investigation, despite being presented with evidence.
The ED alleges the excise policy was used to make big profits for certain private companies, but this wasn’t mentioned in the official meeting records. They also say that Vijay Nair and others were working together to make this happen, supposedly on behalf of Delhi’s chief minister and deputy chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia.
Sisodia’s bail applications in both cases were rejected by Special Judge MK Nagpal (now transferred) on March 31 and April 28 last year. Following this, he approached the Supreme Court challenging these decisions.
On October 30 last year, the apex court upheld the denial of bail to the former Delhi deputy chief minister.