Kejriwal denies CBI allegation of shifting onus of excise policy ‘scam’ to Sisodia. Judge backs CM

Seeking permission from judge to address his case, Delhi CM said CBI was trying to plant this narrative. Judge says CBI's official records indeed didn't reveal any such statement.

File photo of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal | Representational image | Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrint

New Delhi: In a courtroom exchange Wednesday, when his counsels were locked in an intense argument over the grounds of his arrest with the counsels of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal vehemently denied the agency’s allegations that he had shifted all the blame for alleged irregularities in the now scrapped Delhi excise policy.

Kejriwal sought permission from the Special CBI Judge Amitabh Rawat to address his case briefly and alleged that the CBI was trying to plant a narrative that he had shifted the blame on his former deputy Sisodia.

“I spoke on the three objectives of the new excise policy, such as increasing revenue, decreasing queues outside shops, and ensuring equitable distribution, which I directed to Sisodia, to which they asked who gave the idea of privatisation. I merely said it was not my idea,” the Delhi CM said in his address to the court.

He was responding to the argument made by Advocate D.P. Singh, who represented the CBI. Singh said that Kejriwal needs to be confronted with documents as he claimed to have no idea about the excise policy and shifted the onus of the policy on his former deputy Sisodia.

The Judge agreed to his remarks and said that the official records of the case presented by the CBI before him did not reveal any such statement.

Judge Rawat said: “I have read your statement. You have not said what has been claimed by the CBI.”

The CBI sought five days of custody of the Delhi CM but got custody for three days. Kejriwal was already under judicial custody in Tihar jail, and the CBI moved the application for his custodial interrogation Tuesday.

This was not the first time Kejriwal addressed the judge directly.

Earlier, on 28 March, when the Enforcement Directorate (ED) applied for his custody after his arrest on 21 March, Kejriwal had said that the real scam in the case began only after the agency took over the probe.

The Delhi CM had alleged that ED’s probe had been started for two purposes — to finish off his party and create a “smokescreen” that his party was corrupt, and run an “extortion racket” in the background.

(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)