Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Mar 10: The Delhi Rouse Avenue Court on Friday sent the former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia to seven days custody of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a money laundering case pertaining to alleged irregularities in the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy.
Sisodia, who was arrested on February 26 by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), was earlier sent to judicial custody till March 20 but the ED put him under arrest on Thursday after questioning him for two days in Tihar jail. His bail request in the CBI case was to be heard today in a special court, but it has been moved to March 21.
The city court had reserved its order earlier in the day on the Enforcement Directorate’s plea, which sought 10-days custody of Sisodia. The case alleges irregularities in the formulation and implementation of the now-scrapped excise policy. Subsequently, a special court sent him to judicial custody in Tihar Jail.
The ED secured a court order and, on Tuesday, started recording Mr. Sisodia’s statement. Based on the findings, it formally put him under arrest on Thursday. The case was heard by Special Judge M.K. Nagpal.
The lawyer for the federal anti-money laundering probe agency alleged Sisodia made false statements about the ‘scam’ and that it wanted to unearth the modus operandi of the perpetrators and confront him with the other accused. Explaining why it needed Sisodia’s custody, the ED told the special court it wanted to follow where the money trail in the Delhi liquor policy case leads. The ED said the proceeds of the crime is worth at least ₹ 292 crore. “We have summoned officers. We want to confront them with Sisodia in custody,” the ED’s lawyer said. ED’s counsel Zoheb Hossain also claimed before the special court that Sisodia destroyed his phone, an important piece of evidence in the investigation.
The claims of the ED counsel were contested by a battery of lawyers who represented Sisodia. Senior advocates Dayan Krishnan, Mohit Mathur and Siddharth Aggarwal said the excise policy was accepted by the Lieutenant Governor who must have examined it.
Sisodia’s lawyers while opposing the ED’s plea for his custody, said it was the executive’s job to make policy which goes through several layers of scrutiny. “How can ED look into policy making in money-laundering case,” the AAP leader’s counsel asked the court.
“ED has not found a single penny from my client…the case is entirely based on hearsay,” the lawyer said. During the hearing at the Rouse Avenue court, the arrested AAP leader, through his advocate Dayan Krishnan said, “not a single penny is traced to me.”
“In money laundering you are expected to look at concealment, possession, use…it has to be traced ..not a single penny is traced to me. They say Vijay Nair representative of Sisodia….it is laughable. Premier investigative agency…They have not traced a single rupee to me,” Krishnan argued.
Sisodia’s lawyer slammed the ED for considering arrest as a right without going through the due process of law. “It has become a fashion these days that the agencies take arrests as a right. It’s time for the courts to come down heavily on this sense of entitlement,” Sisodia’s lawyer Dayan Krishna said in the special court.
AAP MP Sanjay Singh told reporters that the BJP-led centre ignores serious allegations against leaders of their party and those who join them. “The BJP has co-opted and even rewarded some of them like Himanta Biswa Sarma, Suvendu Adhikari, Mukul Roy, Narayan Rane, BS Yediyurappa and Shivraj Chouhan,” Mr Singh alleged. Eight opposition parties last week wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleging misuse of central investigation agencies to go after them.
In the court hearing on Friday, Sisodia’s lawyer pointed out that the Delhi liquor policy file also went to the Lieutenant Governor, who, too, had cleared it. “We hope the ED questions the Lieutenant Governor,” he said. A key focus of the investigation is an alleged network of middlemen, businessmen and politicians which the central agencies have called the “South Group”. “The (Delhi liquor) policy was tweaked to help companies of the south group. Sisodia diluted the policy without any consultation,” the ED said.
One of the “South Group” people under the radar is K Kavitha, leader of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and daughter of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, a key opposition leader in the centre. She has agreed to appear for questioning on March 11.
The ED has alleged Ms Kavitha benefited from kickbacks in the Delhi liquor policy. The BRS leader has denied the allegations and accused the centre of misusing investigation agencies for political goals. Sisodia and the others face allegations of allowing liquor cartelisation and favouring certain dealers. The AAP has denied taking bribe from anyone, whether traders or politicians.
The Delhi’s AAP government and Centre are locked in a tussle over the national capital’s liquor policy, with ED now arguing that Sisodia conspired with AAP communications-in-charge Vijay Nair and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLC K Kavitha along with the South Group, resulting in “extraordinary” profits for wholesalers. The AAP has maintained that the allegations against the former deputy CM minister are “baseless” and contingent on hearsay.
The ED case was registered on a CBI FIR filed in August last year. In January, the ED filed a supplementary charge-sheet and claimed that the excise policy was created by top leaders of AAP to generate and channel illegal funds to themselves. It alleged that “the conspiracy was to give wholesale business to private entities and fix 12% margin (to get 6% kickback out of the same).”
