New Delhi, 27 Feb

A Delhi court on Friday discharged former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his Deputy Manish Sisodia, and 21 others in the politically charged liquor policy case, pulling up the CBI by saying it found no "overarching conspiracy or criminal intent" in the policy.

Among the 21 people given a clean chit in the case is Telangana Jagruthi president K Kavitha.

Coming down heavily on the CBI, special judge Jitendra Singh refused to take cognizance of the CBI chargesheet against them. It also observed that the federal agency's case did not withstand judicial scrutiny, especially when the CBI sought to construct a narrative of conspiracy on mere conjecture.

The CBI has been probing alleged corruption in the formulation and execution of the erstwhile AAP government's now scrapped excise policy.

As news came in of the clean chit in the case that helped bring the AAP government down, Kejriwal broke down and said the corruption case against him was the "biggest political conspiracy" in the history of Independent India.

"The court has proved that Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and AAP are 'Kattar Imaandar'," the three-time Chief Minister said.

While Kejriwal was in jail for six months in the case, Sisodia was behind bars for two years.

The probe agency said it would immediately appeal in the Delhi High Court against the trial court's judgment.

“Several aspects of the probe have been either ignored or not considered adequately,” a spokesperson said.

Rapping the CBI for lapses in the investigation, the judge said there was no cogent evidence against Kejriwal and no prima facie case against Sisodia and the other accused. There was no “overarching conspiracy or criminal intent” in the excise policy, it said.

Underscoring "some misleading averments", the judge said in his strongly worded ruling that the voluminous chargesheet had several lacunas not corroborated by evidence or witnesses.

"... The chargesheet suffers from internal contradictions, striking at the root of conspiracy theory," he said.

He said that in the absence of any evidence, the allegations against Kejriwal could not be sustained and that the former chief minister was implicated without any evidence.

This, the judge said, was inconsistent with the rule of law.

On Sisodia, the judge said there was no material on record showing his involvement, nor was any recovery made from him.

It also rapped the agency for building its case through approver statements.

"If such conduct is allowed, it would be a grave violation of the Constitutional principles. The conduct where an accused is granted pardon and then made an approver, his statements used to fill the gaps in the investigation/narrative, and make additional people accused is wrong," the court said.

The other accused discharged are Kuldeep Singh, Narender Singh, Vijay Nair, Abhishek Boinpally, Arun Ramchandra Pillai, Mootha Goutam, Sameer Mahendru, Amandeep Singh Dhall, Arjun Pandey, Butchibabu Gornatla, Rakesh Joshi, Damodar Prasad Sharma, Prince Kumar, Chanpreet Singh Rayat, Arvind Kumar Singh, Durgesh Pathak, Amit Arora, Vinod Chauhan, Ashish Mathur, and P Sarath Chadra Reddy.