Delhi Court Rejects Plea By Arvind Kejriwal To Increase Legal Meetings In Jail

The Rouse Avenue Court of Delhi on Wednesday dismissed the plea moved by the Delhi Chief Minister seeking direction to increase the number of legal meetings with his lawyers from two to five times a week and said he has used the allotted legal meeting time for purposes other than legal interviews.

Special Judge Kaveri Baweja on Wednesday passed the order and stated that applicant Arvind Kejriwal has failed to satisfy this court that he has been using the two permitted legal meetings per week solely for the purpose of discussing the pending litigations with his counsels.

The status report filed by the investigating agency indicated that the applicant had dictated certain directions for being passed on to the Water Minister, to one of his lawyers (whose name he refused to disclose to the investigating Agency) during the course of a legal meeting.

During arguments in the matter, ED Counsel Zoheb Hossain along with Naveen Kumar Matta and Simon Benjamin submitted that the relief sought by the Accused/Applicant by way of the application under consideration is contrary to the rules and provisions and hence cannot be granted and the applicant cannot claim any special treatment.

Court noted that the status report which was handed over to the High Court of Delhi, being a subject matter of investigation, was placed before this Court during arguments and it was submitted that the legal interview is being misused by the applicant for other extraneous purposes, as is apparent from the above note. It was argued that the applicant had dictated certain directions to his lawyer during a legal interview, for being passed on to the Water Minister.

Advocates Vivek Jain and Mohd Irshad appeared for Arvind Kejriwal and submitted that he is contesting multiple litigations in different courts of law across several states of India which include the States of Punjab, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Goa, Assam and Delhi, for which the applicant requires consultations with advocates in order to provide appropriate instructions for contesting the same.

Kejriwal's lawyers also contended that since a large number of cases are being contested by the applicant and various documents are to be examined, which requires longer discussions with the counsels, the same cannot be done in two meetings a week. So lawyers prayed that the Accused/Applicant be permitted to have five weekly meetings with his counsels in order to discuss and strategize various pending litigations and to effectively contest the same before the respective courts spread across various jurisdictions.

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday upheld the legality of Arvind Kejriwal's arrest by the Enforcement Directorate in an Excise Case and said the repeated non-compliance of summons for over a period of six months by Arvind Kejriwal was indeed a contributing factor in his arrest. Had the petitioner joined the investigation pursuant to the issuance of summons under Section 50 of PMLA, he could have given his version before the investigating agency against the material that it had collected, said the court.

Kejriwal was arrested on March 21 by the Enforcement Directorate in relation to the excise policy case.

The trial court on April 1 sent Arvind Kejriwal to judicial custody till April 15. ED alleged that the Aam Adami Party (AAP) is the major beneficiary of the proceeds of crime generated in the alleged liquor scam.

(ANI)