The Delhi High Court on Friday halted the bail order granted to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the liquor policy case by a trial court as it allowed an urgent hearing of a plea by the Enforcement Directorate, Bar and Bench reported.
A vacation bench of Justices Sudhir Kumar Jain and Ravinder Dudeja directed that the order should not be given effect till the High Court heard the matter.
Vacation Judge Nyay Bindu of the Rouse Avenue Courts had granted bail to the Aam Aadmi Party chief on Thursday.
After the order was pronounced, the Enforcement Directorate requested the court to give it 48 hours to sign the bail bond and challenge the bail before the appellate court. The judge, however, refused to stay the order.
The court ordered the bail bond to be produced before the duty judge on Friday.
On Friday, Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, appearing on behalf of the Enforcement Directorate, told the High Court that he was not given ample opportunity to oppose the bail plea in the trial court, reported Bar and Bench.
“My prayer for stay on the bail order wasn’t even considered,” Raju said. “I am demanding that the order be stayed and the matter be heard as soon as possible. We were denied the full opportunity to argue the case. I am making allegations with full seriousness.”
Raju also said that the trial court passed the judgement even though the bail order was not provided at the time, reported Live Law. “The order has not yet been uploaded,” he said. “Conditions not known.”
He added that the trial court had said that the records were voluminous and then passed the order, ANI reported. The matter was decided without going through the documents filed by both sides and without giving the Enforcement Directorate an opportunity, Raj alleged.
“Without going through documents, how can you say it’s relevant or not relevant,” he asked, according to ANI.
Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Kejriwal, opposed the central agency’s plea.
“There are ten Supreme Court judgements that cancellation of bail is radically different from grant of bail,” he told the court.
Senior Advocate Vikram Chaudhari, also appearing for the Aam Aadmi Party chief, told the court that the central agency should gracefully accept the court order, reported Live Law.
“This is astonishing,” Chaudhari said. “They can’t accept something with grace. This is the problem with ED.”
The bail order, uploaded on Friday, said that the Enforcement Directorate was silent on certain issues raised by Kejriwal, including that of not naming him in the original first information report by the central agency, reported Live Law.
“If an accused has underwent the atrocities of the system till his innocence is realised, then he could never be able to conceive that ‘justice’ has actually been done in his favour,” the bail order noted.
Following the pause on the chief minister’s bail order, his wife Sunita Kejriwal said that the Enforcement Directorate was treating him “like the country’s most wanted terrorist”.
She said that her husband’s bail order was not even uploaded yet and the central law enforcement agency had approached the High Court to issue a stay on it. “But the decision of the High Court is yet to come and we hope that the High Court will do justice,” she said.
Sunita Kejriwal added: “Dictatorship has increased so much in the country that the ED does not want to give any exemption to anyone.”
The Aam Aadmi Party chief had surrendered at the Tihar jail on June 2 after his 21-day interim bail period ended. The Supreme Court had granted the Opposition leader bail on May 10 in the liquor policy case to allow him to campaign for the Lok Sabha elections. He was arrested by the central law enforcement agency on March 21.
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