Delhi Court Denies Interim Bail To Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal In Liquor Policy Case

A Delhi Court on Wednesday denied interim bail to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the money laundering case related to the alleged liquor policy scam. 

Special judge Kaveri Baweja of Rouse Avenue Courts dismissed Kejriwal's plea seeking interim bail for 7 days on medical grounds. 

His regular bail plea is scheduled for hearing on June 07. Arvind Kejriwal was arrested by ED on March 21. He was granted interim bail by the Supreme Court till June 01. He surrendered a day thereafter.

Court said that certain directions have been passed for certain diagnostic tests for Kejriwal.

Kejriwal, who was produced in court from Tihar jail through VC, has been remanded to judicial custody till June 19. He will now be produced before the vacation judge on June 19 at 2 PM.

Advocate Vivek Jain appearing for Kejriwal said that there has been certain variations in Kejriwal's weight. However, the court said that appropriate application be filed on behalf on the Chief Minister clarifying the relief he is seeking for.

SGI Tushar Mehta appearing for Enforcement Directorate (ED) had raised preliminary objections and said that the interim bail plea was not maintainable.

ASG SV Raju also appearing for ED had submitted that by filing the interim bail application, Kejriwal is asking for extension of the Supreme Court's order which is not permissible. He said that though liberty was granted to Kejriwal by the Supreme Court registry that he can apply for regular bail, there was no liberty for extension of interim bail.

ASG had further said that the rigours for grant of bail under Section 45 of PMLA is mandatory and has to be followed while deciding interim bail application. He said that unless a prima facie case is made out that there is no offence, the application for interim bail cannot be granted.

Raju had also said that there was suppression of facts by Kejriwal as he did not disclose in his application that he had moved the Apex Court for similar relief.

Appearing for Kejriwal, Senior Advocate N Hariharan had submitted that the medical condition of the Chief Minister was such that necessitated moving of the application for interim bail.

He had said that Kejriwal had to do campaigning because that was the purpose of granting interim bail and that his diabetes is aggravated due to stress. 

The Supreme Court Registry recently refused to list Kejriwal's plea seeking a 7-day extension of his interim bail. He was given the liberty to move the trial court for regular bail.

Recently, ED filed a supplementary chargesheet in the money laundering case naming Kejriwal as well as the Aam Aadmi Party as accused. The court has reserved the order on cognizance on the seventh supplementary chargesheet filed by the probe agency.

On April 10, the Delhi High Court dismissed Kejriwal's plea challenging his arrest, observing that ED was able to place enough material, statements of approvers and AAP's own candidate stating that Kejriwal was given money for Goa elections.

AAP leaders Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh are also accused in the case. While Sisodia continues to remain in jail, Singh was recently granted bail by the Supreme Court pursuant to a concession given by the ED.

ED has alleged that Arvind Kejriwal is the "kingpin" of Delhi excise scam and is directly involved in the use of proceeds of crime accounting to over Rs. 100 crores.

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 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.