DC Edit | Kejriwal Relief a Slap for Modi Govt
Special court raps probe, clears Kejriwal, Sisodia, Kavitha
The order of the Delhi special court acquitting Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener and former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia, former Bharat Rashtra Samithi MP K. Kavitha and 20 others in the excise policy case has come in a big relief for the AAP which started off as a platform against corruption and for clean politics only to get mired in a corruption case just before the last Delhi Assembly election. More importantly, it has come as a tight slap on the establishment comprising the Delhi chief secretary, the lieutenant governor and the Union home ministry which supervises the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as well as the Union finance ministry under which the Enforcement Directorate (ED) functions for its diabolical plans against an Opposition political party and its leaders which now stand exposed in front of the nation.
The acquittal comes with a finding that the entire investigation was a “premeditated and choreographed exercise” and the prosecution case was built “solely on the basis of inadmissible hearsay attributed to an approver, despite the investigation yielding no material”. There cannot be a worse comment a court can make on an investigation agency. That the court has asked for a departmental inquiry against the officers who conducted the probe must be considered a warning to those officials who act as stooges of their political bosses and harass innocent people; that a chief minister and his colleagues were the victims in this case calls for close follow-up of the directive.
The acquittal in the case brings to sharp focus the way the present administration has been using the ED to throw its political opponents in jail. The Prevention of Money Laundering Act allows the ED to go after people who launder money obtained through listed criminal activities. Mr Kejriwal, Mr Sisodia and others spent months in jail under this law which makes bail next to impossible. Now that the court concerned has decided that no crime was involved in the case, the ED and its handlers must answer to the people on their bona fides to remain in those places.
