Excise Case: Delhi HC to hear ED plea on August 7 challenging Kejriwal regular bail order by trial court

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Monday fixed August 7 for hearing on Enforcement Directorate's plea challenging trial court order granting regular bail to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in connection with Excise policy money laundering case.

Kejriwal's lawyers submitted that the Supreme Court has recently granted interim bail to Kejriwal, which we will place on record, and sought time to file a rejoinder in the matter.

The bench of Justice Neena Bansal Krishna deferred the matter for August 7, 2024.

ED, in its reply, stated that there is a complete disregard to the vicarious role of Arvind Kejriwal under Section 70 of PMLA. Bail granted to him by trial court vacation judge is liable to be canceled, the order granting bail is based on irrelevant consideration or ignores relevant material.

Recently, the Delhi High Court had stayed the trial Court order granting bail to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal while allowing Enforcement Directorate plea seeking stay on the trial court order in the excise policy money laundering case.

The vacation bench of Justice Sudhir Kumar Jain, while passing the order said, that documents and arguments were not appreciated properly by the trial court.

"This court is of the view that the trial court has not applied its mind and has not considered the material properly," said the court.

Earlier, ED submitted that the impugned order passed by trial court deserves to be stayed and set aside as a vacation judge has returned perverse findings in almost every paragraph of its order on both the facts and the law after admittedly not examining the material placed on record by the prosecution.

The Supreme Court, on July 12, passed a judgement over Kejriwal's plea challenging his arrest by ED and granted him interim bail.

The two-judge bench of Supreme Court also referred the matter to a larger Bench questions raised by Kejriwal on whether an arrest under Section 19 of PMLA could be quashed on the ground that such an arrest was both needless and unnecessary.