New Delhi: The Supreme Court has granted interim bail to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in the Enforcement Directorate’s case against him on Delhi’s excise policy.
However, this will not mean that Kejriwal will walk out of Tihar Jail, where he has been since his arrest by the ED since March 21 – with interim bail in the middle during which he campaigned for the Lok Sabha polls. This is because he was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation on corruption charges in connection with the same alleged issue, on June 25.
LiveLaw has reported that a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta referred the Aam Aadmi Party convenor’s petition challenging his arrest to a larger bench.
This bench will look into whether “the need or necessity of arrest must be read as a condition into Section 19 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.”
The Supreme Court held that Kejriwal’s arrest appears to meet the parameters of “reasons to believe” under Section 19 of the PMLA.
The bench said that the question of interim bail can be modified by the larger bench.
On June 20, Kejriwal had been granted bail in the same case by a vacation judge of the Rouse Avenue court in Delhi. Vacation judge Niyay Bindu had said the ED did not provide enough evidence for the chief minister’s incarceration.
This bail was stayed, allegedly even before the official order was uploaded, by a Delhi high court judge – Justice Sudhir Kumar Jain. Justice Jain’s brother is counsel for the ED, a fact which 150 lawyers have argued, should have led to his recusal from the case.
The ED, represented by Additional Solicitor General S.V. Raju, claimed there is “direct” evidence to show that Kejriwal demanded Rs 100 crores and that the money was used by his party, AAP, to fund its Goa election expenses. Goa held its legislative assembly election in 2022. Kejriwal was arrested by the ED just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
Kejriwal, represented by senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, questioned the necessity, timing and withholding of material favouring him.
The ED is under the control of the Union government, which is led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is in opposition to the AAP. The Delhi chief minister’s arrest came after several top leaders of the party had already been held in connection with the case, prompting allegations of vendetta politics and suppression of the opposition by the Narendra Modi dispensation.