NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Friday discharged former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia and 21 others in the politically charged liquor policy case, pulling up the CBI by saying its case was wholly unable to survive judicial scrutiny and stood discredited in its entirety.
Among the 21 people given a clean chit in the case is Telangana Jagruthi president K Kavitha.
"This court has no hesitation in holding that the material placed on record does not disclose even a prima facie case, much less any grave suspicion, against any of the accused persons. Accordingly, Accused Nos 1-23 are discharged of all the offences alleged against them in the present case," special judge Jitendra Singh said.
The CBI has been probing alleged corruption in the formulation and execution of the erstwhile AAP government's now scrapped excise policy.
The probe agency said it would immediately appeal in the Delhi High Court against the trial court's judgement.
Several aspects of the probe have been either ignored or not considered adequately, a CBI spokesperson said.
In his order, Singh said the investigation appears to have proceeded on a predetermined trajectory, implicating virtually every person associated with the formulation or implementation of the policy to lend an illusion of depth and credibility to an otherwise fragile narrative
"A cumulative appraisal of the record further reveals an investigative approach marked by an attempt to stitch together disparate fragments so as to create an impression of a vast and complex conspiracy, unsupported by legally admissible material," he said.
The judge said that 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.
"Once the formulation of the (excise) policy is shown to be the product of deliberation, institutional scrutiny, and procedural compliance, any subsequent attempt to attribute criminality to its implementation becomes wholly untenable," he said.
Meanwhile, as news came in of the clean chit in the case that helped bring the AAP government down, Kejriwal broke down and said the corruption case against him was the "biggest political conspiracy" in the history of Independent India.
"The court has proved that Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and AAP are 'Kattar Imaandar'," the three-time chief minister said.
While Kejriwal was in jail for six months in the case, Sisodia was behind bars for almost two years.
The judge said the case's very foundation — the allegation of payment of upfront money and its purported recoupment — stands fundamentally eroded.
"In the absence of a tainted policy or demonstrably unlawful implementation, the prosecution theory is reduced to conjecture. Private persons who sought to derive commercial advantage from a policy validly framed and lawfully implemented … cannot be compelled to face the rigours of criminal prosecution," his judgement read.
It added, "This court finds no apparent breach of restrictions relating to 'related entities' or any other policy condition which could, by itself, attract criminal liability."
The court underlined that, according to the evidence on record, the policy was the outcome of a deliberative exercise.
"Though there was no statutory or constitutional requirement mandating the obtaining of suggestions from the Lieutenant Governor, the file notings unmistakably reflect that such suggestions were nevertheless sought, examined, and incorporated. The procedural integrity of the policy-making process thus stands affirmed from the documentary record itself," it said.
The court said that the alleged conspiracy was nothing more than a speculative construct resting on conjecture and surmise, devoid of any admissible evidence.
"The excise policy case, as sought to be projected by the CBI, is wholly unable to survive judicial scrutiny and stands discredited in its entirety," it said.
The court said that to compel the accused to face the rigours of a full-fledged criminal trial in the stark absence of any legally admissible material serves no ends of justice.