Kejriwal, Sisodia, Kavitha among 23 discharged
A Delhi court on Friday discharged all 23 accused persons in CBI’s excise policy case or the alleged liquor scam case, including former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and ex-deputy CM Manish Sisodia – Aam Aadmi Party leaders. Former Bharat Rashtra Samithi MP K. Kavitha was also among those discharged by the court.
CBI has decided to appeal in the high court against the judgement of trial court immediately, saying several aspects of investigation have either been ignored or not considered adequately.
After the court’s decision, Kejriwal was seen breaking down while speaking to reporters. “I am not corrupt. The court has said that Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia are honest,” he said, and broke into tears. Excise case was biggest political conspiracy in history of Independent India, he added.
The order was passed by Special Judge Jitendra Singh. The court said that it has found no material at all against the accused persons to support the prosecution agency’s evidence.
The Delhi court refused to take cognisance of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chargesheet in the excise policy-linked corruption case. The court termed the probe as a “pre-meditated and choreographed exercise”, wherein roles appear to have been retrospectively assigned to suit a preconceived narrative.
“What is particularly disturbing is the complete disregard shown by the investigating officer to the fact that public servants, who were discharging their official duties on a day-to-day basis for the effective implementation of a governmental policy, have been subjected to criminal prosecution solely on the basis of inadmissible hearsay attributed to an approver, despite the investigation yielding no material against them,” the court said.
Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia were among those arrested in the case which the CBI had been probing alleging corruption in the formulation and execution of the erstwhile-AAP government’s now-scrapped excise policy. Kejriwal and Sisodia were arrested while they were chief minister and deputy chief minister, respectively, of Delhi.
“Court order proves Kejriwal and Aam Aadmi Party are ‘Kattar Imaandar’ [dead honest],” Kejriwal said after the order. The CBI filed its first chargesheet in 2022, followed by multiple supplementary chargesheets. The agency has alleged that Rs.100 crore was paid by a “south lobby” to influence the now-scrapped excise policy in its favour.
In total, 23 accused were chargesheeted, including Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, K Kavitha, Kuldeep Singh, Narender Singh, Vijay Nair, Abhishek Boinpally, Arun Ramchandra Pillai, Mootha Goutam, Sameer Mahendru, Amandeep Singh Dhall, Arjun Pandey, Butchibabu Gornatla, Rakesh Joshi, Damodar Prasad Sharma, Prince Kumar, Chanpreet Singh Rayat, Arvind Kumar Singh, Durgesh Pathak, Amit Arora, Vinod Chauhan, Ashish Mathur, and P Sarath Chadra Reddy, according to ANI report.
The AAP leader blamed the Centre for this “big political conspiracy” against him. Kejriwal alleged that the “conspiracy” of the excise case was hatched to finish off AAP at the behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
“To destroy AAP, its five biggest leaders were put in jail. Even a sitting chief minister, something never before seen in Indian history, was dragged from his home and imprisoned for six months. Our deputy, Manish Sisodia, was kept him in jail for nearly two years. The case was entirely fabricated,” Kejriwal told reporters.
The political tremors from the Delhi excise policy verdict rippled beyond the courtroom on Friday as the Congress lashed out at the ruling BJP, alleging that Arvind Kejriwal’s discharge was timed against the backdrop of the Gujarat and Punjab elections.
Kejriwal, who had briefly allied with the Congress ahead of the 2024 general elections, hit back at his former ally, accusing it of having “no shame” and drawing a contrast between AAP leaders going to jail and the Congress high command remaining out of legal clutch.