Delhi excise policy case: HC sends notice to CBI, ED on Sisodia’s bail plea

NEW DELHI: Delhi High Court issued notice to the ED and CBI after hearing APP leader and former Delhi’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia’s plea seeking bail in the Delhi Excise Policy case on Friday.

Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma asked the ED and CBI to file their respective replies to Sisodia’s plea and fixed the matter for further hearing till May 8.

The court also allowed Sisodia to meet his ailing wife once a week under the police custody at his residence.

The ED said it has no objection to Sisodia’s plea for custody parole to meet his wife once a week.

It also said that if the trial court’s February 5 order, of his visitation rights would continue with his wife once a week, then it had no objection.

After taking all the submissions into the record, the HC passed the order and issued notice.

Sisodia had on Tuesday moved the Delhi High Court challenging the Rouse Avenue Court’s order of dismissal of his bail in the Delhi liquor policy case, probed by the CBI and ED.

Sisodia knocked on the doors of the Delhi HC, after the Rouse Avenue Court had recently on April 30 rejected his bail plea in the case.

Sisodia is presently in judicial custody in both the cases registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the Delhi Excise Policy case.

Special judge Kaveri Baweja of Rouse Avenue Courts, which had reserved its verdict on April 20, dismissed Sisodia’s bail plea, on the ground that the offemce committed by the accused (Sisodia) did not make out a case to be granted bail.

Abhishek Manu Singhvi, senior lawyer for Sisodia, had submitted to the court that the former Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister, is languishing in jail for even more than a year, as he was arrested on February 26, 2023, for the alleged corruption in the formulation and implementation of the now-scrapped Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22 following several rounds of questioning.

“He is innocent in the case. He has no role in the Delhi liquor case,” he told the court.

The prosecutor for the CBI, Pankaj Gupta, opposed the bail plea of Sisodia and said that the accused did not satisfy the rigours of the grant of bail under the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering). He said that Sisodia is a powerful person with a “political clout”.