Overview
- Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma issued notice on Wednesday to Arvind Kejriwal on the Enforcement Directorate’s appeal against his January 22 acquittal in cases alleging he skipped ED summons, with a hearing fixed for April 29 and the trial court record called.
- Granting a last opportunity on Thursday, the High Court gave Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and others until April 22 to file replies to the ED’s plea to delete adverse observations from the February 27 discharge order, and it scheduled arguments for that day.
- The ED argued the trial judge committed a grave error because service and receipt of the summons were undisputed and said email delivery under the money laundering law sufficed, while the trial court had held email service was not valid under CrPC or PMLA and that non-appearance did not prove intent.
- The trial court’s February 27 order, which discharged 23 accused in the CBI case, cautioned against using PMLA or criminal law to police election spending claims and warned that doing so could criminalise electoral competition, which the ED now calls judicial overreach recorded without a hearing.
- The parallel High Court proceedings, which include a pending CBI challenge to the discharge order and Kejriwal’s interim bail granted after a Supreme Court intervention in July 2024, could shape how agencies serve PMLA summons and how far trial courts may comment on separate investigations.