Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 9: After 17 months in jail, the former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia was on Friday granted bail by the Supreme Court in both the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate cases of money laundering charges linked to the alleged Delhi excise policy scam after making powerful observations for keeping an accused behind bars indefinitely without any trial.
“Every day counts in matters of personal liberty,” the Supreme Court stressed to the CBI and the ED. In a powerful verdict the court said he was entitled to a “speedy trial” and that a rejection now would force him to work his way back up the system. “It would be like making him play snakes and ladders,” the top court said. “In a matter pertaining to the life and liberty of a citizen – which is one of the most sacrosanct rights guaranteed by the Constitution – a citizen cannot be made to run from pillar to post,” the court said.
Mr Sisodia was arrested by the CBI on February 26, 2023, and by the Enforcement Directorate less than two weeks later. He has now been granted bail in both cases, with an irate Supreme Court stating he cannot stay in jail indefinitely while the prosecution works to an unconfirmed trial date.
A Bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and K.V. Viswanathan said the right to a speedy trial and personal liberty were sacrosanct. Bail cannot be withheld as a punishment. If the state, prosecution agencies or even courts do not have the wherewithal to protect an accused’s right to a speedy trial, they should not withhold bail on the ground that the alleged crime was serious.
The said keeping the Aam Aadmi Party leader in jail for an “unlimited time”, without a trial, was in violation of his fundamental rights. “Incarceration of 18 months… Trial not having even commenced and appellant has been deprived of right to speedy trial,” Justice Gavai said as he asked tough questions of the lower courts. “Keeping appellant behind bars for unlimited time will deny fundamental right. Appellant has deep roots in society… no apprehension of fleeing. Anyway… conditions can be imposed.”
The apex court ordered him to be released on payment of ₹ 10 lakh in bail bonds. The Aam Aadmi Party leader has to surrender his passport and report to the police station every Monday. Justice Gavai also expressly declined an oral plea made by the ED/CBI to bar Mr Sisodia from the Delhi Secretariat. The court said Mr Sisodia had “deep roots in the society” and there was no possibility of him trying to flee or tamper with evidence or influence witnesses.
“Keeping Mr Sisodia incarcerated for an unlimited time in the hope of a speedy trial is a violation of his fundamental right to liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution,” Justice Gavai, who authored the verdict, observed. The court said there was not even the “remotest possibility” of the trial concluding in the near future. The prosecution has 493 witnesses lined up. There were over a lakh pages of documents and over a 1000 documents involved in the case.
“As observed time and again, prolonged incarceration before being pronounced guilty of an offence cannot be permitted to become punishment without bail,” Justice Gavai noted. The Bench said the Supreme Court was flooded with “open-and-shut” bail cases rejected by the trial and High Courts. The principle that ‘bail is the rule and jail an exception’ was being followed in breach.
Mr Sisodia had undergone two earlier rounds of litigation for bail. The first round ended on October 30 last year with the apex court denying him interim bail while upholding his right to speedy trial. The probe agencies had assured the apex court to conclude the trial in the next six to eight months.
The apex court, in its October 2023 judgment, had also called for a “suitable relaxation” of the stringent twin conditions for bail – there should be prima facie satisfaction that the accused has not committed the offence and that he is not likely to commit any offence while on bail – under Section 45 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) if the accused had already undergone protracted incarceration as an undertrial.
The second round culminated on June 4, 2024, again in the Supreme Court. Mr Sisodia was denied interim bail, but allowed him to “revive” his plea as soon as the final charge-sheet was filed. This was after the Solicitor General gave an assurance in court to file the final charge-sheet on or before July 3. The eighth charge-sheet was filed in the trial court on June 20, prompting Mr Sisodia to revive his bail plea in the top court.
Rejecting the agencies’ contention that Mr Sisodia should seek his bail first in the trial court rather than directly approach the apex court, Justice Gavai, on Friday, said the grant of bail was not a “snake-and-ladder game” and it would be a “travesty of justice” to relegate the bail plea to the trial court. “Procedure is the handmaid of justice not the mistress of justice,” the Supreme Court highlighted.
Friday’s judgment also rubbished the agencies’ argument that Mr Sisodia had filed “frivolous” applications in the trial court to delay the trial. Justice Gavai said he had filed 13 applications in the CBI case and 14 in the ED case. They ranged from seeking permission to meet his ailing wife to information about missing documents or for more legible copies. “The trial court allowed all the applications. Not a single one was found frivolous by the trial court,” Justice Gavai underscored.
The top court further noted that the three months taken by Mr Sisodia’s legal team to pour over 69,000 pages of documents produced by both the CBI and ED was only reasonable and cannot be called a ploy to delay the trial.
Justice Gavai poked holes at ED’s “self-contradictory” claim in court that the trial had already commenced. The court reminded the agencies that they had, in October 2023, sought up to eight months to complete the investigation. This was followed by a request, which was recorded in the June 4, 2024 order, that the charge-sheet would be filed on or before July 3, 2024.
“How would the trial have commenced prior to the filing of the charge-sheet… Both the trial court and the High Court had failed to take this factor into consideration,” Justice Gavai pointed out.
The Delhi High Court had rejected Mr Sisodia’s bail application on May 21 while a vacation bench of the apex court of Justices Aravind Kumar and Sandeep Mehta had also refused bail to him on June 4 but had given the AAP leader liberty to “revive” his plea for bail, afresh, as soon as the final charge-sheet/prosecution complaint had been filed by the CBI and ED, respectively, in the case.
Mr Sisodia’s party has welcomed his release, calling it “victory of truth.” Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha, in a euphoric post on X declared “the entire country is happy today as Manish Sisodia, hero of the Delhi education revolution, got bail.”
“This verdict is a slap on Centre’s dictatorship. He was in jail for 17 months. His life was destroyed in those months. He could have worked for education of children in that time,” Sanjay Singh – who was also arrested, and later granted bail by the top court, in this case – said.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor also reacted, saying Mr Sisodia ought to have been released earlier. The verdict was hailed by senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi as a “very prompt judgement.” The response was striking too; “In matters of liberty, everyday counts.” Justice Gavai said.
Mr Sisodia’s release means that of the three high-profile AAP leaders arrested in the liquor policy case only Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal remains in jail. Mr Kejriwal has already secured bail for his arrest by the ED. However, since he was re-arrested, by the CBI, days after his bail in the ED case was confirmed by the High Court, he is still behind bars.