Delhi Court Rejects Arvind Kejriwal's Plea For Additional Meetings With Lawyers, Says He Passed Directions To Water Minister Through Counsel

A Delhi Court on Wednesday dismissed an application moved by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is in judicial custody in the liquor policy case, seeking permission to have five weekly meetings with his lawyers instead of the two meetings permitted to him.

Special judge Kaveri Baweja observed that Kejriwal is not even utilizing the permitted two legal interviews per week with his lawyers solely for discussing his pending litigations and has rather used the allotted time for “purposes other than legal interviews.”

The judge said that Kejriwal failed to satisfy the court that he has been using the two permitted legal meetings per week solely for discussing the pending litigations with his lawyers.

“The status report/note filed by the Investigating Agency indicates that the Applicant had dictated certain directions for being passed on to the Water Minister, to one of his lawyers (whose name he refused to disclose to the Investigating Agency) during the course of a legal meeting,” the court said.

It added: “It thus appears that the Applicant is not even utilizing the permitted two legal interviews per week with his counsels solely for discussing his pending litigations and has rather used the allotted time for purposes other than legal interviews in the aforesaid manner. Keeping in view the above observations, the application under consideration is hereby dismissed.”

Kejriwal is currently in judicial custody. He was arrested on the night of March 21. On March 22, the trial court remanded him to six days of ED custody, which was extended by a further four days. On April 01, he was remanded to judicial custody till April 15.

The Delhi High Court yesterday dismissed Kejriwal's plea challenging his arrest in the money laundering case. Earlier today, he moved the Supreme Court against the ruling.

Kejriwal had skipped nine summons issued to him by ED. Aam Aadmi Party leaders Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh are also accused in the case. While Sisodia remains in judicial custody, Singh was recently granted bail by the Supreme Court.

Following his arrest, Kejriwal promptly moved an urgent petition before the Supreme Court challenging his arrest. However, the same was withdrawn later.

Moreover, he has previously moved the Delhi High Court (division bench) challenging the summons issued to him by the central probe agency. He has also filed an application seeking interim protection. The matter is fixed for hearing on April 22.

Kejriwal skipped the summons, claiming that they were illegal.

It is ED's case that the excise policy was implemented as part of a conspiracy to give wholesale business profit of 12 percent to certain private companies, although such a stipulation was not mentioned in the minutes of meetings of the Group of Ministers (GoM).

The Central agency has also claimed that there was a conspiracy that was coordinated by Vijay Nair and other individuals along with South Group to give extraordinary profit margins to wholesalers.

Nair was acting on behalf of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, according to the agency.