NEW DELHI, Mar 4: A Delhi court on Saturday extended by two days the CBI custody of the former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who was arrested on February 26 in connection with the alleged Delhi liquor scam and was remanded to CBI custody for five days.
Earlier, the Rouse Avenue Court posted the hearing of Sisodia’s bail plea to March 10, at 2 p.m. After the CBI claimed that Sisodia was ‘not cooperating’, the court of Special CBI Judge M.K. Nagpal announced the extension of remand.
In his bail request, Sisodia said keeping him in custody will “serve no fruitful purpose” as all the recoveries in the case have already been made. Sisodia’s lawyer said the “inefficiency of the agency” to complete the probe cannot be ground for remand, and he cannot be asked to incriminate himself.
Sisodia told the court that he was being repeatedly asked the same questions again and again. ‘This is mental harassment,’ Sisodia told the court. The Judge then directed the CBI to not to ask the same questions to Sisodia. “Please don’t ask same questions again and again. If you have something new ask him,” the court said.
Sisodia’s lawyers had also filed a bail plea in the court that was posted for hearing on March 10. Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) for the CBI Pankaj Gupta, during the hearing, told the court that Sisodia’s custody should be extended for three more days. “He is still non-cooperative. We also need to examine some more people,” the SPP said, to which Justice Nagpal questioned the CBI as to how long the agency had interrogated Sisodia in last 5 days.
Responding to this, the CBI claimed that he was interrogated daily, but claimed that as Sisodia moved Supreme Court, it wasted lot of time of the agency. Reacting to this, Sisodia’s lawyers and senior advocates Dayan Krishnan and Mohit Mathur argued that the CBI cannot ask for extension of the custody on the same ground again and again. They alleged that the CBI wanted their client to confess something he hadn’t done and otherwise there was no point of asking the same question many times.
The lawyers also highlighted Sisodia’s wife’s medical condition and added that there is no progress in the CBI’s plea from day one till now. “In this case, while considering all these things, my wife’s medical condition has been brushed aside. She is basically in a vegetative state and her body is degenerating,” Sisodia told the court through Mathur.
There was heavy security presence in and outside the Rouse Avenue Courts premises. The supporters of the Aam Aadmi Party staged a protest outside the premises and raised slogans. The CBI on February 26 evening arrested Mr. Sisodia in connection with alleged corruption in the formulation and implementation of the now-scrapped liquor policy for 2021-22.
(Manas Dasgupta)
