The Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued notice on the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) petition challenging the trial court’s order acquitting former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in two cases filed by the agency on allegations of skipping summons in the Delhi excise policy case.
A bench of Justice Suwarana Kanta Sharma sought Kejriwal’s response in the ED’s plea against the January 22 order and fixed April 29 as the next hearing date.
“The defendant has chosen not to appear despite service. He issued a fresh notice and listed it on 29.4.2026. The record of the trial court will be called in digital form,” the court said in its order.
The agency, while investigating Kejriwal in connection with the Delhi tax policy case, issued three summons to Kejriwal in 2023. However, it later filed two complaints in February and March 2024, alleging that Kejriwal, instead of appearing before the agency, had raised frivolous objections and deliberately created grounds showing that he deliberately did not want to comply with the summons.
On January 22, Additional Judge Paras Dalal of the Ross Avenue Courts acquitted Kejriwal, holding that the ED had issued summons to Kejriwal via email, which did not stand the test of law under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and was therefore not tenable under the law.
Read also: Excise case: Kejriwal and 22 others have time till April 2 to respond to the ED petition
The ruling also held that the prosecution failed to prove the accused’s deliberate disobedience of the summons beyond a reasonable doubt, which gives the accused the right to acquit his name.
The court noted that while issuing the said summons to the accused, the investigating officer had mentioned in his statement that he issued summons later only when the reason mentioned by Kejriwal in his reply had disappeared, “which showed that he had not checked the land and only waited for it to be over.”
ED’s counsel, Zoheb Hossain, along with Vivek Gurnani, contended that the trial court had committed a gross error while recording its findings, contending that the issue of receipt of summons was never in dispute as Kejriwal had responded to all the summons issued to him.
Notably, on February 27, the trial court had discharged Kejriwal, former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, and 21 others in the case being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with Delhi’s tax policy. An appeal challenging the order is currently pending before the Supreme Court.
