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Informist, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – A Delhi court Friday discharged all 23 accused, including Aam Aadmi Party leaders Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, in the Central Bureau of Investigation's Delhi liquor policy case. The probe agency said it will file an appeal before the Delhi High Court challenging the order, on grounds that several aspects of the investigation were either being ignored or not considered adequately.

 

Special Judge Jitendra Singh of the Delhi court said the prosecution's case did not disclose even the threshold of a prima facie suspicion, far less the "grave suspicion" mandated by settled principles of criminal jurisprudence, for proceeding further. The Delhi excise policy case, as sought to be projected by the CBI, is wholly unable to survive judicial scrutiny and stands discredited in its entirety, said Judge Singh.

 

On allegations against former Delhi deputy chief minister Sisodia, the court said there was no material showing demand or acceptance of illegal gratification by him and the CBI failed to establish any direct or indirect financial trail linking him to the alleged bribe transactions. The court said decisions related to the liquor policy were taken in a collective manner, involving multiple officials and stakeholders and there was nothing on record to show Sisodia acted unilaterally or with criminal intent. 

 

The court said the CBI failed to place any material showing that former Delhi chief minister Kejriwal received or facilitated the receipt of any bribe money. The allegations against him were based on statements of co-accused or witnesses, but there was an absence of independent corroboration connecting him to any criminal conspiracy, said the court. Mere approval of policy decisions, without evidence of dishonest intention or quid pro quo, does not attract criminal liability, said the court. No documentary or electronic evidence established any pecuniary advantage to Kejriwal arising from the alleged scam, said the court.

 

The alleged conspiracy, from its very inception, has progressively unravelled and, upon scrutiny, reveals that it is nothing more than a speculative construct resting on conjecture and surmise, devoid of any admissible evidence, said the court. The investigation, when tested against the material collected by the agency itself, reflects a fundamental failure to properly appreciate, evaluate, or draw lawful inferences from the evidence and documents on record, said the court. As a result, the prosecution case is rendered legally "infirm, unsustainable, and unfit" to proceed any further in law. "...this court records that the theory of an overarching conspiracy, so emphatically projected, stands completely dismantled when tested against the evidentiary record," said Judge Singh. 

 

"...upon independent scrutiny, this court finds that the entire alleged chain of payments rests predominantly on so-called pauti entries of Angadia firms, documents which are inadmissible in law, and on approver-like statement which remains uncorroborated on material particulars," said Judge Singh. The CBI's investigation appears to have proceeded on a pre-determined trajectory, implicating virtually every person associated with the formulation or implementation of the policy in order to lend an illusion of depth and credibility to an otherwise fragile narrative, said the court. "The endeavour to further connect such allegations to the Goa Assembly elections, to project, layering, and utilisation of alleged proceeds of crime, rests more on inference and assumption than on legally sustainable material," it said.

 

The manner in which the investigating agency has proceeded, by repeatedly recording the statements of the approver without justification and over a prolonged duration, reflects an exercise of discretion that cannot be characterised as fair or reasonable, said the court. If left unchecked, such conduct risks converting the exceptional mechanism of pardon into an instrument for narrative construction rather than truth discovery, thereby causing serious prejudice to the accused and eroding confidence in the criminal justice process, it added. The conduct where an accused is granted pardon and then made an approver, his statements are used to fill the gaps in the investigation and make additional people accused is wrong, said the court, pulling up the CBI for building a case through approver statements.

 

The Delhi government had in November 2021 announced a new excise policy that allowed private companies to sell liquor in the national capital. The policy was withdrawn after allegations of cartelisation and monopoly. The CBI registered a case in the excise policy case in July 2022 on a complaint from Delhi's Lieutenant Governor V.K. Saxena. The CBI and the Enforcement Directorate have alleged that AAP took money from a liquor lobby in south India to announce the new policy. They had termed Kejriwal as the kingpin and key conspirator in the scam.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Tanima Banerjee

 

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