In the Delhi liquor policy case, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a charge sheet against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and others in the Rouse Avenue Court.
Kejriwal, also the Aam Aadmi Party’s national convener, was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on March 21 in connection with a money laundering case related to the alleged excise policy scam. While the Supreme Court has granted him interim bail in the ED case, he remains in jail as the CBI arrested him in a related matter.
The court dismissed the State’s objection, noting that Kejriwal’s judicial custody in the CBI corruption case doesn’t prevent him from seeking bail in that or other cases pending against him in various states.
“Indisputably, he has some thirty – forty cases against him in various States and continues to be in custody in the CBI case. To confine this fundamental right to a particular case and to insist on an independent application in each case, is not only taking a myopic view but would result in multiplicity of similar relief being asserted in different cases,” the court said.
It added that to ask Arvind Kejriwal to move independent applications in each case would lead to delay and may indirectly deny him the right to effective legal help.
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Tihar jail authorities opposed Arvind Kejriwal’s petition, arguing that many inmates with over 100 pending cases are permitted only two meetings with their lawyers each week. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) alleged that Kejriwal was using these lawyer meetings to relay instructions to Delhi government ministers.
In separate petitions, Kejriwal has contested his arrest in the CBI’s corruption case related to the alleged excise policy scam and has also applied for bail.
The AAP leader was arrested by the CBI on June 26 while in Tihar Jail, where he was being held in judicial custody for a money laundering case filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). Though Kejriwal was granted bail in the ED case on June 20, the high court stayed the trial court’s order.
On July 12, the Supreme Court granted Kejriwal interim bail in the money laundering case, pending a larger bench’s consideration of three key questions related to the “need and necessity of arrest” under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
He has yet to obtain bail in the corruption case filed by the CBI concerning the alleged excise policy scam.
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