Delhi HC dismisses Sanjay’s Singh plea against arrest by ED in excise policy case

The Delhi high court on Friday dismissed Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh’s plea while upholding his arrest and remand by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the money laundering case registered by the agency in its ongoing probe into the alleged irregularities in the now-scrapped Delhi liquor excise policy case.

A single bench of justice Swarana Kanta Sharma pronounced the order after having reserved it on Thursday.

Refusing to interfere, justice Sharma said that the ED is the premier investigating agency and the court would desist from insinuating or imputing any political motives to it.

“This court desists from imputing political affiliations or objects to the premier investigating agency. This court will not at this stage insinuate or impute any political motivates to the agency in the absence of any political record,” the court said.

The court was of the view that it was not appropriate for the court to interfere at the stage when the investigation into the scam was at a “premature and nascent stage.”

Singh was arrested by the ED on October 4, following a day-long interrogation by the agency officials at his Delhi residence for his alleged role in procuring favours for himself and certain businessmen through his aides by influencing the excise policy.

On October 10, special judge MK Nagpal while extending Singh’s ED remand for three days directed the Investigating Officer (IO) to analyse all digital data without any delay and also complete the interrogation and confrontation of the accused as well as examination of relevant witnesses. Singh called the charges made against him “false and baseless” and alleged a political witch-hunt by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government at the Centre.

The bench in its judgement on Friday also ruled Dinesh Arora’s statement, a co-accused, who had turned approver in the case.

Calling Singh a “key conspirator” of the Delhi liquor scam, the ED appearing through additional solicitor general (ASG) SV Raju on Thursday, told the high court that Singh was capable of “tampering with the evidence as he had access to confidential documents”.

The law officer also said that the ED while conducting a search at his house had recovered a photo of a printout of Arora’s statement recorded by ED officials.

“The photo shows that it was taken in the ED office. The issue is that he had access to the ED office. The document shows that it was a table in the ED office. There are files of ED lying & photographs are taken,” said ASG Raju.

He added that Singh’s arrest was legal and in accordance with the law and was not a consequence of Singh sending a legal notice to ED officials and demanding an apology from them for allegedly making false and derogatory claims about him in the excise policy case.

“His (Sanjay Singh) involvement had not surfaced after he gave us a notice but before that only. This was much before he gave a media bite. Evidence was not collected after he gave us notice. That is a bogey,” he added.

The ASG further argued that the remand order passed by the judge was not mechanical and was passed after due application of mind.

Responding to the law officer’s submissions of Singh being an influential person, advocate Rajat Bharadwaj appearing for Singh contended that Arora’s statement was already in the public domain.

He had earlier submitted before the court that the ED’s entire case against him was based on the statement of co-accused – Arora, who had turned approver in the excise case being probed by the agency.