New Delhi, 17 August (H.S.): The Delhi High Court, while hearing the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) plea challenging the trial court’s order acquitting all the accused in the Delhi excise policy case, has directed all respondents to file their replies within four weeks. A bench headed by Justice Manoj Jain said the matter would be listed for further hearing during the week commencing October 5, when the court will hear the CBI’s arguments.
During Monday’s hearing, counsel appearing for all the accused argued that the CBI’s plea was not maintainable. In response, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and Additional Solicitor General S.V. Raju, appearing for the CBI, termed the contention “absurd”. Mehta said the accused were publicly stating that the trial court’s verdict was favourable to them and argued that the matter should therefore be left to the High Court to decide. The court observed that the issue needed to be heard comprehensively and that the matter could not be considered in a piecemeal manner. It said the arguments would be heard together on one occasion.
Former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia have opposed the CBI’s plea. They have argued that the agency filed its petition barely four hours after the trial court delivered its verdict. According to them, the petition was filed with unprecedented haste and lacked seriousness.
Kejriwal and Sisodia have further contended that the CBI’s application does not identify any error in the trial court’s judgment and questioned how the agency’s plea could therefore be considered maintainable.
On July 16, the High Court had granted Kejriwal, Sisodia and Durgesh Pathak a final opportunity to file their responses to the CBI’s plea. The matter was earlier listed before a bench headed by Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma before being placed before Justice Manoj Jain.
The Rouse Avenue Court had, on February 27, ordered the acquittal of all the accused in the case. The trial court had observed that there were substantial contradictions in the chargesheet. It said that the facts presented across thousands of pages of the chargesheet did not correspond with the statements made by witnesses.
The Rouse Avenue Court had also noted that Manish Sisodia had spent around 530 days in custody in the case, while Arvind Kejriwal had been in jail for 156 days across two separate periods. Kejriwal was released on September 13, 2024, after the Supreme Court granted him bail in the CBI case.
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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar
