The Supreme Court on Friday granted Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal bail for his arrest by the Central Bureau of Investigation in the alleged liquor excise policy case. The court noted the Aam Aadmi Party leader had been in jail since March and came down strongly on his detention without a trial, noting the “prolonged incarceration amounts to unjust deprivation of liberty”.
However, while the two-judge bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan agreed on the release of the Chief Minister, they differed on a second plea – challenging the CBI’s arrest in June, while he was still in ED custody, and days after a trial court granted bail in the latter’s case.
Justice Bhuyan seemed to ask serious questions of the CBI and its apparent late actions.
“It appears (that) only after trial court granted regular bail in ED case that CBI became active and sought custody. It didn’t feel need to arrest for over 22 months…” he noted.
“I fail to understand the great urgency on part of CBI to arrest appellant as he was on cusp of release in the ED case. Mr Raju (Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, appearing for the probe agency) vehemently argued the appellant has to first approach the trial court… this can’t be accepted.”
Mr Kejriwal was first arrested in mid-March by the Enforcement Directorate. This was after he skipped nine summons to appear for questioning; he declared those summons “illegal”.
However, in April last year the CBI had grilled the AAP leader for several hours in connection with the liquor policy case. Agency sources told NDTV then he had been called as a witness in the case, which exploded after the arrest of Mr Kejriwal’s ex-deputy, Manish Sisodia.
The AAP and Mr Kejriwal’s lawyers have repeatedly argued the CBI’s move to arrest the Chief Minister on June 26 this year – more than a year after it first questioned him – was “insurance” in the event of his securing bail in the ED case, which he eventually did on July 12.
The Supreme Court ordered Mr Kejriwal’s release in the money laundering case filed by the ED, but since he had already been arrested by the CBI, the AAP leader could not leave jail.
Justice Bhuyan also hit out at the “travesty of justice” – a term the court also used when releasing Manish Sisodia, jailed for nearly 18 months without a trial – that involved keeping Arvind Kejriwal in jail without substantial evidence to justify his detention.
Material provided by the CBI does not satisfy the court, he said, criticising “evasive replies” by the probe agency. In a significant statement he also said the accused “cannot be compelled to make inculpatory statements (referring to those that imply guilt)”.
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