Court Discharges Kejriwal, Sisodia, Kavitha in Liquor Scam Case

New Delhi: The CBI was left red-faced after a Delhi court on Friday delivered it a body blow by discharging former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, his former deputy Manish Sisodia and 21 others, including Telangana Jagruthi president K. Kavitha in the politically explosive Delhi liquor scam case. The court refused to take cognisance of the country's premier investigative agency's chargesheet, exposing gaping holes in what was projected as a high-profile anti-corruption probe.

While Kejriwal was in jail for six months in the case, Sisodia was behind bars for almost two years and Kavitha for almost five-and-a-half months.

In a scathing order, Rouse Avenue court special judge Jitendra Singh pulled up the CBI for serious “lapses” in investigation, holding that there was no prima facie case against Kejriwal, Sisodia and other accused. The judge also ordered departmental proceedings against the CBI investigating officer for making public servant Kuldeep Singh the accused number one in the case. Singh was the deputy commissioner of excise.

The judge said: “I am recommending a departmental inquiry with respect to framing A1 (Singh) as an accused. I am repeating, there is no material at all, and you have framed him as accused number one.”

The court said the investigating officer’s (IO) probe was "premeditated and choreographed” and that the allegations against Singh were not the objective of an impartial investigation but were framed to fit a preconceived narrative. It also flagged grave concern over the IO’s decision to retain individuals in the column of “suspects” while simultaneously citing them as prosecution witnesses in the chargesheet.

The trial judge took note of the allegation against Kejriwal that he was a "central figure" who manipulated the policy for the benefit of the so-called "South Group" and also for the purpose of "recouping the upfront money".

The judge said: “The prosecution seeks to connect Accused 18 (Kejriwal) mainly based on one sentence in the statement of the witness, namely, prosecution witness 225 Magunta Sreenivasulu Reddy: 'Thereafter, he told me that Ms Kavitha, daughter of K. Chandrashekar Rao, the then chief minister of Telangana, would be contacting me in this regard'.”

Taking note of the evidence before it, the court said there was no relevant document, file noting, electronic communication, financial transaction or digital evidence to directly or indirectly connect Kejriwal with any alleged policy manipulation or illegal gratification. “There is no material to show his presence at any conspiratorial meeting or to indicate his knowledge of any unlawful arrangement. The attempt to implicate him rests on an inference drawn from an uncorroborated accomplice-like statement,” it said.

The court said the mere invocation of the expression "conspiracy" does not dispense with the requirement of material indicating agreement and participation. “The prosecution proceeds on the premise that the policy was manipulated pursuant to a criminal design. If that foundation is not established, the subsequent allegations (of a larger conspiracy) necessarily lose their footing,” it said.

Celebrations erupted in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) after the trial court pronounced its verdict. Jubilant workers showered petals on their leaders, while a visibly overwhelmed Kejriwal broke down amid chants and applause. He alleged that the “biggest political conspiracy” of the excise case was hatched in the history of Independent India at the behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah to finish off the AAP.

“I always used to say that God is with us. Modi Ji and Amit Shah Ji together hatched the biggest political conspiracy of Independent India. The five biggest leaders of AAP were sent to jail for finishing off the party… The court has proved that Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and AAP are 'kattar imaandar' (dead honest),” the three-time Delhi CM said.

In a social media post on X, Kejriwal said: “In the end, unrighteousness and injustice are defeated, and truth alone prevails. Satyameva Jayate.”

Later, addressing a press conference at the APP headquarters, Kejriwal challenged the BJP that if elections were immediately held in Delhi, they (the BJP) would not get even 10 seats. Kejriwal’s wife Sunita also thanked the court and the judge for "bravery".

In its order, the trial court said the investigation appears to have proceeded on a predetermined trajectory, implicating virtually every person associated with the formulation or implementation of the policy to lend an illusion of depth and credibility to an otherwise fragile narrative.

The judge said: “A cumulative appraisal of the record further reveals an investigative approach marked by an attempt to stitch together disparate fragments so as to create an impression of a vast and complex conspiracy, unsupported by legally admissible material.”

The court said that the endeavour to further connect such allegations to the Goa Assembly elections, to project layering and utilisation of alleged proceeds of crime, rests more on inference and assumption than on legally sustainable material.

“Once the formulation of the (excise) policy is shown to be the product of deliberation, institutional scrutiny, and procedural compliance, any subsequent attempt to attribute criminality to its implementation becomes wholly untenable,” the court said.

Expressing its displeasure with the CBI for using the phrase "South Group" while cautioning it to exercise restraint in its choice of language, the trial court said such a nomenclature finds no foundation in law, does not correspond to any legally cognisable classification and is wholly alien to the statutory framework governing criminal liability.

"The court considers it necessary to place on record its concern with the repeated and deliberate use of the expression 'South Group' by the investigating agency to describe a set of accused persons, ostensibly based on their regional origin or place of residence… It is equally significant that no comparable regional descriptor has been employed for the remaining accused persons. The prosecution narrative does not speak of any 'North Group' or similar categorisation. The selective adoption of a geographically defined label is, therefore, plainly arbitrary and unwarranted," the judge added.

The court said, "The continued use of this label, despite the absence of any legally sustainable basis, carries a real risk of colouring perception, causing unintended prejudice and diverting focus from the evidentiary material, which alone must guide adjudication.”

After the trial court verdict, Kejriwal said that they will file an application in a court for discharge in connection with cases registered by the Enforcement Directorate, which is probing a money-laundering matter, an offshoot of the CBI FIR lodged on August 17, 2022.

The ED officials, however, asserted that their investigation into the excise policy-linked money laundering case is a "standalone" probe built on credible evidence and testimonials from various entities.

According to the Supreme Court's ruling in the Vijay Madanlal (2022) case, once an accused is acquitted of the scheduled offence, the money laundering offence automatically ceases. The ED has been arguing that money laundering should be treated as a standalone offence irrespective of the outcomes of the predicate or primary case being probed by the CBI or any other agency.

The ED officials said the evidence furnished by the agency in its chargesheets was “credible” and differed from the CBI’s, and the process of laundering, layering and placing the alleged proceeds of crime is explained in detail.