New Delhi: Hearing Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s plea challenging his arrest and his remand by the CBI, the Delhi high court issued notice to the investigating agency and scheduled the matter for its next hearing on July 17, LiveLaw reported.
According to PTI, the high court gave the CBI seven days to respond to its notice and said Kejriwal’s counsel could file a rejoinder within two days after the CBI provides it response.
The CBI arrested Kejriwal in connection with the Delhi liquor policy case, where it is alleged that his Aam Aadmi Party government granted liquor licenses to certain traders in exchange for bribes. The policy has been scrapped.
While the Enforcement Directorate (ED), a Union government financial crimes agency, arrested him in March specifically in connection with alleged money laundering in the case and has since accused of being its “kingpin”, the CBI arrested him only on June 26.
PTI cited Kejriwal’s counsel as arguing that the CBI’s arrest memo said the grounds of his arrest was simply that he was not cooperating with the investigation into the case.
But “the same cannot be a ground of arrest and mere non-cooperation is not the ground statutorily available to arrest the person,” Kejriwal’s plea in the high court said, adding that the CBI did not point to any new material in the case that would justify his arrest, PTI reported.
His counsel also said it would seek bail in the case soon, PTI also said.
Incidentally, the CBI arrested Kejriwal on the day the Supreme Court was to hear his challenge against the Delhi high court’s decision to stay his bail in the ED’s case.
The CBI’s arrest made it possible for Kejriwal to be kept behind bars irrespective of what the Supreme Court says on his bail in the ED’s case against him.
The Indian Express explains that this is because the standard of bail is different under the Prevention of Corruption Act than in the stringent Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The CBI is probing allegations of corruption in the liquor policy case.
On June 20, the trial court in the case granted bail to Kejriwal and said the ED was acting with bias against the chief minister and that the agency had failed to provide any evidence directly linking Kejriwal to the proceeds of crime in the case.
The high court stayed his release the next day.
He will remain in judicial custody till July 12.
