Not without due process: In Delhi excise policy case, a special court sends out a resonant and reassuring message that CBI and government must heed

The order of Special Judge Jitendra Singh of Rouse Avenue Court, acquitting former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, among 23 of the accused discharged in the Delhi liquor policy case, is essential reading for the CBI and the government. It is a reminder of the fundamental salience of due process — much needed in a polarised polity, where all too often, central agencies are weaponised by the ruling party on a witch hunt against political opponents, which then seek to do their master’s bidding by collapsing vital distinctions, connecting dots by taking political leaps, relying on conjecture, not proof. Ever since the CBI filed the FIR in the case of the subsequently-scrapped excise policy in August 2022, it cast a lengthening shadow on the Aam Aadmi Party. For the AAP, allegations of corruption were especially fraught, given that the party was born in the throes of the Anna Hazare-led movement against corruption. The case weighed down the Arvind Kejriwal government, led to the spectacle of a sitting Chief Minister being sent to jail, alongwith his top ministers and senior party leadership, and overhung the 2025 assembly election campaign in Delhi, arguably playing a role in the AAP’s defeat at the hands of the BJP. The court has now called a halt to this saga, and sent an unequivocal message: Not without due process.

While striking down the CBI’s case of overarching conspiracy and criminal intent, the court has objected to its method of investigation – the CBI’s reliance on approver statements acquired after pardoning an accused. It has rebuked the agency, sternly and rightly, for using the expression “South Group” — the CBI claimed that individuals based in Hyderabad paid kickbacks to AAP leaders, which the AAP allegedly used to fund its 2022 Goa and Punjab campaigns. “Region-based labelling”, the court said, is not mere “irregularity of expression”, but constitutes “constitutional infirmity”, because “criminal trials must be about what the defendant did, not who the defendant is”. The court takes apart the CBI case, bit by bit, pointing out that the prosecution material does not meet the threshold of legally admissible evidence, that failure of a policy is not by itself evidence of criminality, that proof is needed to read administrative lapses as criminal conduct, that allegations of conspiracy cannot rest on inferences alone or mere association or “multiple layers of hearsay” or uncorroborated statements of witnesses. Again and again, it points to the several holes in the case because of lack of facts, seizures, or financial trail. “A procedure which permits prolonged or indefinite incarceration on the basis of a provisional and untested allegation… risks degenerating into a punitive process rather than a regulatory or investigative one”, it says.

For the AAP, this is a moment of vindication. Going ahead, it will need to build on it, politically. For the CBI and the government that controls it, this is a chastening moment, which will hopefully have a restraining effect when they next seek to unleash a vindictive politics. In times when checks and balances on power seem to be weakening, a special court in Delhi has sent out a message that is resonant and reassuring for the polity.