Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Court on Friday dismissed the bail plea of former deputy CM and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Manish Sisodia in the excise policy case. The AAP leader will now move to the Delhi High Court against the Rouse Avenue Court order.
Special Judge M K Nagpal, in the court, said Sisodia was the “architect of the whole criminal conspiracy” in the scam.
“The evidence collected so far clearly shows that the applicant (Manish Sisodia) through the co-accused Vijay Nair was in contact with the South lobby and formulation of a favourable policy for them was being ensured at every cost and a cartel was permitted to be formed to achieve monopoly in sale of certain liquor brands of favoured manufacturers and it was permitted to be done against very objectives of the policy,” read the court order.
The court said the payment of “advance kickbacks of around Rs 90-100 crores was meant for Sisodia and his other colleagues in the Delhi government and Rs 20-30 crores out of the above are found to have been routed through the co-accused Vijay Nair, Abhishek Boinpally and approver Dinesh Arora and in turn, certain provisions of the excise policy were permitted to be tweaked and manipulated by the applicant to protect and preserve the interests of South liquor lobby and to ensure repayment of the kickbacks to the said lobby”.
Citing Sisodia’s conduct as “reflected from destruction or non-production of his previous mobile phones of the relevant period and also the apparent role played by him in not producing or missing of the file of one Cabinet Note put up through the then Excise Commissioner Rahul Singh”, the court said there may be serious apprehensions of destruction or tampering of some further evidence and even of influencing of some prime witnesses of this case by him or at his instance, in case he is released on bail by the court.
On March 24, Special Judge M K Nagpal reserved his order on the Aam Aadmi Party leader’s plea seeking regular bail in the case after the CBI handed over a short note regarding its contention in the case.
“A brief written submission on behalf of CBI has been filed in opposition to the regular bail application of the accused. Copy thereof as well as case law has been given to the counsel of accused. Copy of part of case diary and statements of some witnesses have been also made available,” the special judge said.
The agency on February 26 arrested Sisodia in connection with alleged corruption in the formulation and implementation of the now-scrapped Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22.
The Enforcement Directorate arrested Sisodia on March 9 evening in Tihar jail, where he was lodged in connection with the case being probed by the CBI.
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