Excise policy scam: Supreme Court issues notices to CBI, ED on BRS leader K Kavitha's bail pleas

New Delhi, August 12

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notices to the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate on BRS leader K Kavitha’s petitions seeking bail in money-laundering and corruption cases linked to the Delhi excise policy ‘scam’.

A Bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice KV Viswanathan asked both the probe agencies to respond to Kavitha’s petitions challenging the Delhi High Court’s verdict denying her bail in the corruption and money-laundering cases and posted the matter for August 20.

On behalf of Kavitha, senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi submitted that Kavitha had already spent five months in jail.

Arrested by the ED on March 15 and then by the CBI on April 11, the 46-year-old daughter of former Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao has been accused of being a key member of the "South Group", which allegedly paid the ruling AAP in Delhi kickbacks of Rs 100 crore in return for a big share of liquor licences in the national capital. Since her ED arrest from her Banjara Hills home in Hyderabad, Kavitha has been lodged in Tihar jail.

The Delhi High Court had on July 1 dismissed her bail pleas in corruption and money-laundering cases, saying she was prima facie one of the main conspirators in the criminal conspiracy related to the formation and implementation of the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy. No case for grant of regular bail was made out for now as the investigation was at a crucial stage and that as a well-educated person and a former MP, she cannot be equated to a vulnerable female, and the court cannot lose sight of the "serious allegations" against her, the High Court had said.