The Enforcement Directorate has approached the Delhi High Court challenging the acquittal of former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in two cases related to his absence before the agency despite summonses in the excise policy probe.
The appeal is against a January 22 order of a trial court and is scheduled to come up for hearing on Wednesday before Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma.
The agency told the court that the then chief minister “intentionally omitted to obey them by not responding to summonses and did not attend the probe.”
It also said he “raised frivolous objections and deliberately created grounds for not attending the probe.” The trial court had taken a different view. It said the ED failed to prove that Kejriwal intentionally disobeyed the summonses issued to him.
The ED has maintained that other accused in the case were in touch with Kejriwal while drafting the now-scrapped excise policy, which, it claims, led to undue benefits and kickbacks for the Aam Aadmi Party.
Kejriwal is currently on interim bail in a money laundering case linked to the same policy. The Supreme Court of India has referred questions on the “need and necessity of arrest” under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act to a larger bench.
In a related development, a trial court on February 27 discharged Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and 21 others in the liquor policy case investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation, saying the case could not stand judicial scrutiny and stood discredited in its entirety.
The CBI has challenged that order in the high court, where the matter is pending.