Delhi High Court Issues Notice On Arvind Kejriwal's Plea Against Cognizance Of ED Chargesheet, No Stay Granted Today

The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued notice on the plea filed by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Chief Arvind Kejriwal challenging a trial court order which took cognizance of ED's chargesheet against him in the money laundering case linked to the alleged excise policy scam.

Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri granted time to ED to respond to the plea. However, the Court did not pass any order in the stay application for today.

Senior Advocates N Hariharan and Rebecca M John along with Advocates Vivek Jain and Mudit Jain appeared for Kejriwal. SGI Tushar Mehta represented ED.

At the outset, Mehta submitted that there was a sanction for prosecution and sought time to file an affidavit in the matter.

Hariharan contended that the seventh supplementary chargesheet filed by ED naming Kejriwal as an accused was “verbatim same” as the sixth supplementary chargesheet. He said it was filed without any fresh material collected during investigation and that even the witnesses were same in both chargesheets.

However, SGI objected to the submission saying it was factually incorrect and said that further investigation was conducted by ED. He said that the same contention was rejected by the trial court.

On this, Hariharan said that the trial court never went into the said aspect at all.

As Hariharan pressed that the stay application be disposed of today, the Court listed the matter for hearing on December 20.

Kejriwal has challenged the impugned order on the ground that the impugned 7th Prosecution complaint filed qua him was without jurisdiction, as the same was filed without any fresh material collected during investigation but merely by re-evaluating the already collected material, which is impermissible in the eyes of the law.

He has said that further investigation conducted by the Directorate of Enforcement was without jurisdiction as no leave of the Trial Court was granted in terms of law laid down in Vinay Tyagi v. Irshad Ali (2013) 5 SCC 762 & Vinubhai Haribhai Malaviya v. State of Gujarat (2019) 17 SCC 1.

Furthermore, the plea submits that the impugned order taking cognizance on the 7th Supplementary Chargesheet was also bad in law, as there was no sanction under Section 197 of Cr.P.C. qua Kejriwal.

Recently, the Court had issued notice in Kejriwal's plea challenging the maintainability of ED's complaint in the case. He had also challenged a a trial court order rejecting his plea challenging the summons issued to him on ED's complaint.

Kejriwal has been granted bail in both ED and CBI cases connected to the liquor policy case.

The AAP chief was formally arrested by CBI on June 26, while he was in custody of the Enforcement Directorate in the money laundering case.

Case Title: Arvind Kejriwal v. ED