New Delhi: The CBI has filed a massive appeal against the trial court order in the 2022 Delhi excise case, calling the 27 February discharge of Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, and 21 others “patently illegal” and “perverse” and with “errors apparent on the face”.
Stating that Special Judge (Prevention of Corruption Act) Jitendra Singh conducted a “mini-trial”, the CBI has contended that he dealt with “separate limbs of conspiracy in isolation,” rather than cumulatively assessing the evidence. Pointing out what it sees as “selective reading” of the prosecution’s case, the CBI has claimed that the judge disregarded the material that showed the accused’s culpability.
The CBI has further argued that the judge, in his 27 February order,“failed to appreciate” the prosecution’s case with the “correct perspective” and that led to his “unwarranted and incomprehensible” remarks about the central agency and the investigating officer.
The Delhi HC—a bench of Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma—is now expected to take the petition up on 9 March, after the Holi break.
Earlier, dismissing the CBI case against the 23 accused in the Delhi liquor policy case in a 598-page order, the Rouse Avenue district court in Delhi had pulled up the CBI for procedural lapses and overly relying on hearsay evidence.
CBI’s appeal
In its plea, the CBI has argued that individual roles of each of the accused in the liquor policy case may not indicate culpability, but the conspiracy to monetise the now-scrapped policy becomes clear considering their actions cumulatively.
Highlighting that the judge completely ignored the basis of the conspiracy and instead evaluated small contradictions in detail, though they did not even form part of the prosecution’s case, the CBI has said that the judge “formulated his own understanding of the individual roles of the accused in a completely different perspective”. The plea has further pointed out that the single judge lacked a basic understanding of the prosecution’s case, as well as the law to be applied at this stage of the CBI’s charges.
“In substance, a case of rampant corruption, emanating from the highest levels of executive, has resulted in a discharge owing to incorrect conclusions being drawn to impute aspersions on the investigating agency, when the record of the case, which is to be treated as uncontroverted at this stage, speaks otherwise,” the plea has contended.
In its 27 February order, the Rouse Avenue court discharged—essentially released—all the accused, calling the evidence insufficient to raise “grave suspicion” or establish a prima facie case. The judge even described the CBI’s chargesheet as full of “lacunae” and based on “conjecture”.
Emphasising that the order misread facts, in addition to arriving at incorrect findings on the law of co-accused-turned-approvers, the CBI has stated that its case was against the accused, who indulged in criminal conspiracy and bribing public servants for irregularities at the time of framing and implementing Delhi’s 2021-2022 liquor policy.
Also Read: Kavitha, Vijay Nair & others: CBI couldn’t establish ‘money trail’ in Delhi excise policy case
Tracing the controversy
According to the FIR registered by the CBI in August 2022, the central agency received information of certain irregularities while the Delhi government was framing the excise policy from its sources, as well as the then director of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Praveen Kumar Rai. So, it initiated an investigation.
After the CBI filed five charge sheets against 23 persons for offences such as criminal conspiracy, cheating, causing disappearance of evidence, and bribing public officials, the trial court took up its case on a day-to-day basis and heard arguments between 22 December 2025 and 12 February.
The Delhi Excise Policy 2021–22 was “deliberately crafted and implemented as an instrument of corruption, designed to generate large-scale illegal gratification through embedded margin manipulation”, the CBI has claimed. The then Delhi government aimed to distribute and utilise the proceeds and returns from the irregularities towards political objectives, such as the Goa elections, the central agency has said.
“The conspiracy was conceived at the highest political level, where the policy framework was deliberately altered to create a private wholesale regime with an enhanced 12 percent margin from the existing five percent and also relaxed the turnover criteria, despite expert recommendations to the contrary,” according to the CBI appeal. “On this, judge Singh had concluded that the 12 percent ceiling was fixed to regulate the profit margin for wholesalers, while the five percent in the proposed policy was the base price for traders to negotiate, and this gave them wider latitude to have a profit margin that could even cross 12 percent.”
Regarding the irregularities, the CBI has also stressed that all the politicians and bureaucrats involved were hand-in-glove, but Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia were the key politicians involved.
Manish Sisodia, “being the minister of excise as well as finance”, was “instrumental” in the formulation and implementation of the policy and Arvind Kejriwal, the “overall in-charge of AAP”. looked after “all its major decisions”, according to the central agency. “Durgesh Pathak and Vijay Nair, closely linked to them, worked in close proximity with them to achieve the end goal of the conspiracy,” the appeal has further stated.
Finally, the plea has argued that the case, “read as a whole, disclosed a single, continuing criminal conspiracy,” which began when the excise policy was formulated and generated kickbacks for the Goa elections.
All eyes are now on the Delhi HC, as it gears up to hear the plea.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
Also Read: What’s the CBI’s ‘misconception’ of legal positions that court flagged in Delhi excise case