The Delhi High Court on Tuesday imposed a stay on the regular bail granted by a trial Court to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the excise policy case.
The pronouncement of the verdict begins at 2.30 pm today. Justice Sudhir Kumar has presided to deliver the verdict. Justice Sudhir Kumar Jain opined that the trial court had not sufficiently appreciated the evidence submitted by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The judge also concurred with Additional Solicitor General (ASG) S.V. Raju’s contention that the central agency was not given an adequate opportunity to argue its stay application.
“Accordingly the application of Enforcement Directorate (ED) is allowed. The operation of the impugned order is stayed,” Justice Kumar ruled while acting on the ED’s plea challenging the bail granted to the Chief Minister last week.
Acceding to ED’s plea, the High Court imposed an interim stay on Mr. Kejriwal’s release and reserved its verdict to peruse the case records. This prompted Mr. Kejriwal to approach the Supreme Court citing an unwarranted curtailment of personal liberty.
“This Court has decided that the vacation judge did not appropriately appreciate the material on record and the averments of ED. Accordingly, the application is allowed and the operation of the impugned order is stayed”, the order says.
The High Court refers to observations made by the trial court judge that it was not possible to go through thousands of pages of documents filed by the respective parties.
“The Court of the opinion that such observation was totally unjustified and also reflected that the trial court has not applied it mind to the material placed before the court at the time of dealing with the bail application,” the High Court says.
“There was a strong argument that the twin conditions of Section 45 PMLA was not deliberated by the vacation judge. This court is of the opinion that Section 45 PMLA has not been properly discussed by the trial court”, Justice Kumar says while reading out the order.
[Section 45 of the PMLA imposes twin conditions for bail for money laundering offences – (i) that there are “reasonable grounds for believing that [the accused] is not guilty of such offence”; and (ii) that “he is not likely to commit any offence while on bail”.]
Shortly after the HC’s order pronouncement, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) stated, “We dissent with the decision of the High Court. We will challenge this decision in the Supreme Court. The order on bail can’t be stayed in this manner, the Supreme Court too has said this yesterday”.
The Supreme Court on June 24 remarked that the Delhi High Court’s decision to stay CM Kejriwal’s bail without issuing a final order was “a bit unusual.” A vacation bench consisting of Justices Manoj Misra and SVN Bhatti noted that typically, in cases involving stay applications, the orders are pronounced on the same day rather than being reserved.
In light of this, the apex court has scheduled a hearing for June 26 to address Kejriwal’s plea against the interim stay on his bail by the Delhi High Court in the money laundering case associated with the alleged excise scam. The bench indicated that it would prefer to wait for the Delhi High Court to pronounce its order on the matter before proceeding with the Supreme Court hearing.