Delhi HC denies Kejriwal early hearing in plea against ED charge sheet

The Delhi high court on Friday refused to give an early hearing to former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on his plea against a city court’s order taking cognizance of the charge sheet filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the Delhi excise policy case.
A bench of justice Manoj Kumar Ohri said that he would consider the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief’s petition on December 20, the date already fixed for the matter. To be sure, the high court on the same day will also consider former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia’s plea against the city court’s decision to take cognizance of the probe agency’s charge sheet in the same case.
“The matter will be heard on the same date (December 20). I have a lot on the board to hear,” justice Ohri told senior advocate N Hariharan, representing Kejriwal.
The AAP convener had approached the high court seeking to quash a city court’s July 9 order taking cognizance of the 200-page charge sheet filed by ED and issuing production warrants against him, saying that there was sufficient material on record to proceed against the accused.
In his petition, Kejriwal also sought for quashing all the proceedings emanating from the case, claiming that the money laundering offence was committed while he was a public servant and he was entitled to the protection stipulated under Section 197(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), whose applicability was reinforced by the Supreme Court in Bibhu Prasad Acharya’s ruling. Section 197(1) of CrPC mandates that no prosecution against a public servant can proceed without obtaining prior sanction from the competent authority. The provision corresponds to Section 218 of the Bhartiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which has replaced CrPC with effect from July 1. In its ruling delivered on November 6, the Supreme Court had ruled that prior sanction is required to prosecute public servants for money laundering.
Kejriwal’s plea went on to add that the ED had filed the charge sheet without taking prior sanction from the competent authority and the city court had taken cognisance without fulfilling the said prerequisite and thus his prosecution was bad in the eyes of law. “Moreover, the impugned order was passed by the Ld Special judge without dealing with any of the allegations as mentioned in the chargesheet or recording satisfaction with respect to the allegations mentioned therein,” the plea claimed.
On November 21, the high court had refused to immediately stay the trial court proceedings, after ED claimed that it had the sanction to prosecute the AAP supremo.
The AAP Supremo was arrested by the ED on March 21 and by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on June 26, after a sequence of dramatic developments in court. On July 12, the Supreme Court had granted interim bail to Kejriwal in the ED case, acknowledging that he has spent over 90 days in incarceration and in the CBI case on September 12, reiterating bail is the rule, and jail an exception. The case against the former CM had stemmed from allegations of irregularities in Delhi’s now-scrapped excise policy of 2021-22, which the CBI began probing following a recommendation by Delhi’s lieutenant governor (LG) in July 2022.