The Supreme Court will deliver its verdict on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s plea challenging his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money-laundering case on Friday.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta, which reserved its verdict on the plea on May 17, will pronounce the judgment.
During the hearings, the apex court had asked the ED to submit the files, and stated, “We want to see the statements of witnesses recorded after Manish Sisodia’s arrest, after the delivery of the judgment denying bail to him, and before Kejriwal’s arrest.”
Additional Solicitor General, S V Raju, told the top court that more evidence regarding the hawala transaction was found, and WhatsApp chats were also unearthed.
On this, the bench asked if these were mentioned in the “grounds of arrest” recorded in writing and given to the Delhi Chief Minister. In response to this, Raju stated, “The probe agency is not supposed to share everything with the accused.” To which the bench asked, “How will you not give reasons to believe? How will he challenge those reasons?”
Meanwhile, ED has filed a chargesheet in the Delhi liquor policy case, which directly implicates Arvind Kejriwal’s involvement in the party receiving Rs 100 crore kickback in lieu of the policy.
As per the chargesheet, AAP supremo was in cahoots with the members of the ‘South Group’ and others such as Vijay Nair to get kickbacks to the tune of Rs 100 crore for “providing undue benefits to private entities by way of formulating and putting in use a tailor-made liquor policy”. Nair, as per the probe agency, acted on behalf of the top AAP leaders, including Arvind Kejriwal.
The Delhi Chief Minister was arrested by the central probe agency, ED, on March 21 in a case alleging that a criminal conspiracy was concocted by AAP leaders, including Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, and others, to create loopholes in the liquor policy to favour liquor sellers.
Kejriwal challenged the April 9 order of the Delhi High Court that had upheld his arrest in the case. The Delhi HC had said there was no illegality about it and that the central probe agency was left with “little option” after he skipped repeated summonses and refused to join the investigation.
The Supreme Court had on April 15 sought a response from the central probe agency on his plea challenging his arrest.
Arvind Kejriwal was earlier granted 21-day interim bail by the Supreme Court on May 10 to campaign for the Lok Sabha polls. He was directed to surrender on June 2, a day after the last phase of the seven-phased elections was scheduled to end.
He was then granted bail by a trial court in Delhi on June 20 in the case. However, the ED moved the Delhi High Court the next day and contended that the trial court’s order granting him bail was “perverse”, “one-sided” and “wrong-sided” and that the findings were based on irrelevant facts.
The high court on June 21 imposed an interim stay on the trial court’s bail order till the passing of an order on ED’s application for interim relief. The high court on June 25 also passed a detailed order staying the trial court order.
Five days later, he was arrested by the Central Bureau Of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the corruption case related to the alleged liquor policy scam.