Five questions posed by Supreme Court to ED in Arvind Kejriwal case

The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to respond to five questions relating to the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in connection with the Delhi Excise Policy case..A Bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta orally asked Additional Solicitor General SV Raju to answer the following questions on the next date of hearing:1. Without there being adjudicatory proceeding, can you have criminal proceedings initiated? There are no proceedings of attachment in this case so far, and if there are, then show how Kejriwal is involved.2. Manish Sisodia case has findings in favour and against - tell us where does the Kejriwal case lie then?3. Threshold under Section 19 of PMLA, which casts onus on prosecution and not on accused, is fairly high, whereas under Section 45, onus shifts on accused. So how do we interpret it? Do we make the threshold much higher and ensure that standard is same?4. Time gap between initiation of proceedings and action of arrest etc.5. The timing of arrest, which is just before the general elections..Delhi court denies bail to Manish Sisodia in both CBI and ED cases on Delhi Excise Policy.Kejriwal had challenged his arrest and remand before the Supreme Court after the Delhi High Court dismissed his plea in the matter.The ED’s money laundering probe against Kejriwal stems from a case registered by the CBI on August 17, 2022 in connection with alleged irregularities in the Delhi Excise Policy for 2021-22. The CBI case was registered on a complaint made by Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena on July 20, 2022. It has been alleged that a criminal conspiracy was hatched by AAP leaders, including Kejriwal, former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and others.The conspiracy, it has been alleged, stemmed from some of the loopholes “intentionally” left or created in the policy. These were allegedly meant to favour some licensees and conspirators post the tender process.Several AAP leaders including Sisodia and Member of Parliament Sanjay Singh were arrested by the ED in connection with the case.Kejriwal was arrested by the ED on March 21and is presently lodged in Tihar Jail.The ED had earlier submitted that Kejriwal cannot be treated differently from any other criminal on the ground that he is a politician and doing so would be arbitrary and in violation of the principle of right to equality enshrined under Article 14 of the Constitution.Although a Chief Minister is not immune from prosecution, his rights are not inferior to the rights of any other person, counsel for Kejriwal had argued yesterday..Follow our coverage of the hearings in the case before the apex court, here and here.