Supreme Court to hear Arvind Kejriwal's plea challenging ED arrest

The Supreme Court will on April 15 hear Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's plea against his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate in the liquor policy case.

The Special Leave Petition is listed for hearing before the bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta. Earlier, the Delhi High Court had upheld his arrest, after he failed to appear in nine summonses in over six months.

The high court has dismissed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader's petition challenging his arrest by the ED and subsequent remand in the federal agency's custody.

The matter pertains to alleged corruption and money laundering in the formulation and execution of the Delhi government's excise policy for 2021-22 that was later scrapped.

Kejriwal was arrested by the ED on March 21, hours after the high court refused to grant him protection from coercive action by the federal anti-money laundering agency.

He is in judicial custody till April 15 and is currently lodged in Tihar Jail.

Kejriwal has described his arrest by the ED ahead of the general election as an "unprecedented assault on the tenets of democracy" and urged the apex court to release him by declaring the case against him as "illegal".

In the appeal filed in the top court, Kejriwal has said his arrest on March 21 after the announcement of the Lok Sabha polls was "obviously motivated by extraneous considerations".

"The intervention of this court is urgently warranted, as over and above the issue of illegal curtailment of liberty, the petitioner's arrest also constitutes an unprecedented assault on the tenets of democracy, free-and-fair elections and federalism, both of which form significant constituents of the basic structure of the Constitution," the plea has said.

The arrest was made solely relying on subsequent, contradictory and highly-belated statements of the co-accused who have now turned approvers, it has said.

Moreover, such statements and material were in possession of the ED for nine months and still the arrest was made illegally days before the general election, Kejriwal has said in his plea.