Excise 'scam': Delhi High Court scheduled to deliver on Tuesday order on AAP leader Manish Sisodia's bail pleas
New Delhi, May 20
The Delhi High Court is scheduled to deliver on Tuesday its order on bail pleas of former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia in money laundering and corruption cases lodged by the ED and CBI respectively in connection with alleged liquor scam.
Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma is likely to pronounce the orders on both bail pleas at 5 PM on May 21, according to the cause list uploaded on the high court’s website.
The high court had on May 14 reserved its order on the pleas after hearing arguments on behalf of the AAP leader, CBI and ED.
During the arguments, the Enforcement Directorate had contended that it would make the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) an accused in the next prosecution complaint (charge sheet) in the money laundering case stemming out of the Delhi excise policy scam.
On May 17, the ED filed a charge sheet against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the money laundering case and also named AAP as an accused.
While seeking bail for Sisodia, his counsel had submitted that the ED and the CBI are still arresting people in the money laundering and corruption case and there is no question of early conclusion of the trial.
Both ED and CBI have opposed Sisodia’s bail pleas on the grounds that there are concerted efforts by the accused to delay the process of framing charges in the case.
Sisodia has challenged a trial court’s April 30 order by which his bail pleas were rejected.
The trial court had dismissed Sisodia’s bail pleas in the corruption and money laundering cases lodged by the CBI and ED respectively in connection with alleged irregularities in the formulation and execution of the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy for 2021-22.
The beneficiaries diverted “illegal” gains to the accused officials and made false entries in their books of account to evade detection, the probe agencies have alleged.
According to the probe agencies, irregularities were committed while modifying the excise policy and undue favours were extended to the licence holders.
Sisodia was arrested by the CBI on February 26, 2023, for his alleged role in the “scam”. The ED arrested him in the money laundering case stemming from the CBI FIR on March 9, 2023.
Sisodia resigned from the Delhi cabinet on February 28, 2023.
The Delhi government implemented the policy on November 17, 2021, but scrapped it at the end of September 2022 amid allegations of corruption.
