The Delhi Court granted bail to Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday for three main reasons: the Chief Justice of India encouraged trial court judges to grant bail; the Delhi Court relied on the Supreme Court’s observations that Kejriwal is not a threat to society while granting interim bail; and the Enforcement Directorate has not yet proven the accused’s guilt.
A 26-page ruling from Judge Nyay Bindu became accessible on Friday, a few hours after the ED petitioned the Delhi High Court to cancel bail.
“But, in the recent past Hon’ble Supreme Court and Hon’ble Chief Justice of India has been encouraging the trial courts to take up the such matters and decide the same. Recently, on CBI Day Celebration, Hon’ble Chief Justice while addressing the gathering and perceiving the difficult and cumbersome task being done by the trial court Special Judges attending CBI and ED matters, passed encouraging remarks for such courts for their motivation and inspiration,” the order stated.
The trial court also said that “the observations of the Supreme Court cannot be ignored” while considering that Kejriwal is the Chief Minister of Delhi and that his constitutional office is relevant to being considered for bail. The order quoted a paragraph from the SC’s May 10 order granting interim bail that Kejriwal “is not a threat to the society.”
In addition to depending on the remarks of the SC, the trial court satisfied the strict requirements of Section 45 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, which addresses the granting of bail, by concluding that the ED had not yet shown its culpability.
The timing of the arrest, changes to the approver statements, and whether the money that was confiscated was indeed the proceeds of crime were the three points the court brought up to undermine the prosecution’s case.
“There are certain undisputed facts as specified on behalf of the applicant that in the month of July 2022, the material was available with the ED against the accused but he was called only in August 2023 which shows malafide of ED and ED has failed to answer this objection of the applicant,” the order stated.
On the second aspect that the statements of approvers initially did not refer to Kejriwal, the order records ED submission that “Investigation is an art, and sometimes one accused is given lollypop of bail and pardon and induced with some assurance to make them tell the story behind the offence.”
To this, the Court said that it “has to take a pause to consider this argument which is not an potable submission that investigation is an art because if it is so, then, any person can be implicated and kept behind the bars by artistically procuring the material against him after artistically avoiding/withdrawing exculpatory material from the record.”
The Court said that this argument “constrains the court to draw an inference against the investigating agency that it is not acting without bias.”
On linking the money seized so far by the ED to proceeds of crime, the Court said that the “ED is silent about the facts as to how the proceeds of crime have been utilised in Assembly Elections at Goa by AAP as admittedly after about two years, the bigger portion of the alleged amount remains to be traced out.”
Kejriwal was allegedly “directly involved in the formulation” of the now-canceled Delhi excise policy, which was created “considering the favours to be granted to the ‘South Group,'” according to earlier allegations made by the ED. The South Group allegedly bribed AAP officials Rs 100 crore in exchange for “secured uninhibited access, undue favours, attained stakes in established wholesale businesses, and multiple retail zones (over and beyond what was allowed in the policy),” according to the ED. Additionally, the agency said that bribes from the “South Group” were used to finance the AAP’s 2021–2022 Goa Assembly election campaign.
