Supreme Court reserves ruling in Manish Sisodia’s bail pleas

A bench of justices asked for an estimated time for trial completion as the former Delhi deputy chief minister has been in custody since February

The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its orders on the bail petitions filed by former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia in separate cases lodged against him by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the Delhi excise policy 2020-21.

Former Delhi deputy chief minister and AAP leader Manish Sisodia is accused of making changes in the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy of 2021 to benefit a group of liquor dealers, causing wrongful loss to the exchequer. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo)

The court asked additional solicitor general (ASG) SV Raju for an estimated time for the trial completion as Sisodia has been in custody since February.

Raju told the SC the trial will likely be completed in 9-12 weeks. Before reserving orders, the two-judge bench told Raju, “There are 294 witnesses involved in the CBI case and over 160 witnesses in the ED case, with roughly 50,000 documents to be examined in both the trials,” and asked if the time estimate was realistic.

ASG Raju said the court may test his statement after six weeks to know the progress of the trial.

Sisodia is accused of making changes in the now-scrapped excise policy to benefit a group of liquor dealers from the south, referred to as the “South Group”, causing wrongful loss to the exchequer by increasing profit margin under the new regime.

CBI has already filed charge sheets in connection with the crime under the Prevention of Corruption Act against the senior Aam Aadmi Party leader. At the same time, ED claimed that the beneficiary companies paid ₹100 crore kickback.

Responding to the allegations, Sisodia’s lawyer senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi said even after one year of probe, ED was relying on “superficial evidence” to deny him bail.

Singhvi told the court that ED could not find any money trail of alleged kickbacks to Sisodia or his family and came up with the allegation that a sum of ₹2.2 crore was paid to a person linked to Sisodia for bringing changes in the policy. This bribe is not part of the predicate offence investigated by CBI, Singhvi said.

The bench told ASG Raju, “If this is not part of the predicate offence that the bribe is paid and the prosecution under the PC Act is not under that, you (ED) may be in difficulty in pursuing proceedings under the PMLA.”

Raju said, “The FIR is broad enough and even if you find something later, you can intimate it to the agency concerned.” Since this had not been done so far, the court replied, “You have not done that so far and we cannot go on assumptions.”

Sisodia had approached the top court against separate orders passed by the Delhi high court denying him bail. On May 30, bail was denied in the CBI case followed by a similar order on July 3 in the ED case.