Kejriwal to move regular bail plea in graft case soon, HC told

New Delhi: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will soon move an application for regular bail in the corruption case related to the alleged excise scam, his lawyer informed the Delhi High Court on Tuesday. The court, meanwhile, asked the CBI to respond to his plea challenging his arrest in the case involving alleged graft.

Justice Neena Bansal Krishna issued notice to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and asked it to file its reply within seven days. The high court said Kejriwal’s counsel may file a rejoinder, if any, within two days thereafter.

It listed the matter for arguments on July 17.

Besides his arrest, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener has also challenged the trial court’s June 26 and June 29 orders by which he was remanded in CBI custody for three days and judicial custody till July 12, respectively.

Kejriwal, 55, was arrested by the CBI on June 26 from Tihar Jail, where he was in judicial custody in a connected money laundering case filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, representing Kejriwal, submitted that an FIR was lodged by the CBI in August 2022 and he was summoned and questioned by the probe agency in April 2023 for

nine hours.

“From April 2023 till now there has been no summons or questioning and now he has been arrested by the CBI on June 26. No new evidence or material is pointed out by CBI in the arrest memo/ grounds of arrest to justify his arrest while he was in judicial custody (in ED’s money laundering case). So there cannot be any necessity or urgency to arrest him,” the senior counsel argued.

On being asked by the judge about whether he has filed any bail plea in the case, Singhvi said not yet but they are going to file it soon. In an interim application, Kejriwal has sought his release from custody in the case till the adjudication of issues raised in the petition. “Since the petitioner’s fundamental rights as guaranteed under … the Constitution are infringed, he is beseeching this court to direct his interim release until the issues that have far-reaching ramifications and are of grave legal, constitutional as well as public importance are adjudicated,” it said.

The petition said in the arrest memo of June 26, the grounds of arrest merely stated that Kejriwal was not cooperating with the investigation and not disclosing the facts known to him. The same cannot be a ground of arrest and mere non-cooperation is not the ground statutorily available to arrest the person, it said.