Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi and a prominent member of the opposition, was formally arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) today in relation to a case involving the excise policy scandal.
Special Judge Amitabh Rawat gave the anti-corruption agency permission to arrest Kejriwal at the trial court. Since his detention on March 21 in relation to the same case by the Enforcement Directorate, an anti-money laundering agency, Kejriwal is already incarcerated.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader was permitted by the Supreme Court to submit a new appeal in which he contested the Delhi High Court’s decision to halt the trial court’s ruling granting Kejriwal regular bail.
This happened when the Rouse Avenue trial court granted the CBI permission to cross-examine Kejriwal in court and requested that the evidence they had for his detention be entered into the record.
This morning, Kejriwal was taken by the CBI to Rouse Avenue Court for a hearing over the excise policy issue.
AAP attorney Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that since the high court passed a detailed order on June 25, he would like to file a substantial appeal and that new developments were occurring every day, leading to Kejriwal’s arrest by the CBI. In a related development, Kejriwal was granted permission by the Supreme Court to pursue his earlier plea challenging the Delhi High Court order granting an interim stay on the trial court’s bail order in a money laundering case related to the excise scam.
Kejriwal was detained by the ED during the parliamentary election campaign, but the top court granted him temporary freedom so he could run for office for 21 days.
On June 2, two days after the results were announced, the AAP chieftain made a surprise visit to prison. The results showed that his party had a disastrous election, winning only three of the 13 seats in Punjab that it controlled and not a single Lok Sabha seat in Delhi, Haryana, or Gujarat.
