A Delhi court on Friday discharged all 23 accused persons in CBI’s excise policy case or the alleged liquor scam case, including former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and ex-deputy CM Manish Sisodia - Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders.
After the court's decision, Kejriwal was seen breaking down while speaking to reporters.
"I am not corrupt. The court has said that Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia are honest," he said, and broke into tears. Excise case was biggest political conspiracy in history of Independent India, he added.
The order was passed by Special Judge Jitendra Singh. The court said that it has found no material at all against the accused persons to support the prosecution agency’s evidence.
The Delhi court refused to take cognisance of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chargesheet in the excise policy-linked corruption case.
Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia were among those arrested in the case which the CBI had been probing alleging corruption in the formulation and execution of the erstwhile-AAP government's now-scrapped excise policy.
Kejriwal and Sisodia were arrested while they were chief minister and deputy chief minister, respectively, of Delhi.
“Court order proves Kejriwal and Aam Aadmi Party are ‘Kattar Imaandar’ [dead honest]," Kejriwal said after the order.A Delhi court in January acquitted former Kejriwal in two cases filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) over allegations of skipping the federal agency’s summonses during its probe into the Delhi excise policy case.
The CBI filed its first chargesheet in 2022, followed by multiple supplementary chargesheets. The agency has alleged that ?100 crore was paid by a "south lobby" to influence the now-scrapped excise policy in its favour.
In total, 23 accused were chargesheeted, including Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, K Kavitha, Kuldeep Singh, Narender Singh, Vijay Nair, Abhishek Boinpally, Arun Ramchandra Pillai, Mootha Goutam, Sameer Mahendru, Amandeep Singh Dhall, Arjun Pandey, Butchibabu Gornatla, Rakesh Joshi, Damodar Prasad Sharma, Prince Kumar, Chanpreet Singh Rayat, Arvind Kumar Singh, Durgesh Pathak, Amit Arora, Vinod Chauhan, Ashish Mathur, and P Sarath Chadra Reddy, according to a news agency