Excise policy case: Delhi High Court issues directions to ensure speedy trial

The Delhi High Court on Friday issued certain directions to ensure speedy trial in the Delhi excise policy case being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) [Arun Ramachandran Pillai v Central Bureau of Investigation]. .Senior politicians like former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader K Kavitha are accused in the case. .In an order passed on Friday, Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma asked the trial court to hear arguments on charge in the case immediately and to give “block dates” to each accused for arguments on framing of charges. “The counsel who prefer to file written submissions may file it on the same day they conclude arguments. It will now depend on the accused persons as to how much time will they take to address arguments on charge, individually or collectively, for the purpose of speedy trial. The learned Trial Court is requested to ensure short dates are given for the above purpose,” Justice Sharma ordered.The Court said that once the CBI files its supplementary chargesheet against accused K Kavitha, the same shall be provided to accused persons on the very first day of hearing to save time.“The learned trial court will thereafter give short dates in this case for scrutiny of the said documents. The Investigating Officer (IO) shall also ensure that the copies which are given to the accused persons are legible and paginated. The accused persons may go through the said copies and inform the IO about any deficiency in the hard copies and digitized copies within two days,” the Court directed. Justice Sharma further said that there should be no unnecessary delay in the scrutiny of the documents by the accused persons. .The Bench passed these directions while dealing with a plea filed by Hyderabad businessman Arun Ramachandran Pillai, one of the accused in the case. Pillai moved the Court challenging commencement of arguments on framing of charges in the case. He said that the same should be deferred till CBI completes its probe.The trial court had dismissed his plea prompting him to approach the High Court.Pillai's counsel argued that there is a chance that the CBI might arraign more persons as accused in the case, and hence any consideration on the aspect of framing of charges should be deferred.“FIR was registered on August 17, 2022 and even after the lapse of more than 15 months, the same is still not concluded and now the prosecution under the garb of ‘expeditious trial’ cannot be permitted to prejudice the present Petitioner/Applicant,” Pillai argued. .The High Court refused to interfere with the trial court order. It noted that the trial court has said that 16 persons have already been chargesheeted.This would mean hearing arguments on charge will take considerable time and in case any further supplementary chargesheet is filed with respect to any other accused person, the hearing on arguments on charge may then be halted and copies of such chargesheet may be supplied to all the accused persons. "Therefore, this Court is of the opinion that no interference at this stage is required by this Court in the impugned order as the learned Trial Court has already taken note of the grievance of the present petitioner and the said order does not suffer from any infirmity," the High Court ruled. .Advocates Nitesh Rana, Anuj Tiwari, Kaushal Kait, Deepak Nagar, Nikhil Kohli, Soumya Kumar and Monika appeared for Arun Ramachandran Pillai. CBI was represented by Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) DP Singh as well as advocates Manu Mishra, Shreya Dutt and Imaan Khera..[Read Order]