The Delhi High Court on Thursday granted the Enforcement Directorate (ED) time to respond to a petition filed by former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal seeking to overturn a trial court ruling that took cognisance of an ED chargesheet but sanction to prosecute.
Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri’s court scheduled a hearing for December 20. On Thursday, Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta represented ED and stated, “It is my case that there is a sanction, I need to put it on record by way
However, senior attorneys N Hariharan and Rebecca John, representing Kejriwal, stated before the court that while there is a sanction to prosecute Kejriwal in the CBI proceedings for the alleged excise scam, they were unaware of any such authorization in the ED case.
Hariharan addressed SG Mehta and the court, stating that the prosecution sanction was not provided to them.ED in which Kejriwal is named as an accused) was filed. Following that, only panchnama was filed.
Hariharan and John stated that, in addition to the lack of prosecution sanction in taking cognizance of the complaint, Kejriwal’s plea challenges two additional aspects: “One is that this chargesheet is the seventh prosecution complaint. There is nothing new that has been investigated; the prosecution complaint is the same as the sixth prosecution case, including witnesses.”
However, SG Mehta rebutted, saying, “This is factually incorrect; additional investigation was conducted, and the same argument was rejected by the trial court.” Kejriwal’s lawyers argued that the trial court “never went” into this issue.