The ED said in a remand note that Arvind Kejriwal, the “kingpin” in the excise policy case, demanded Rs 100 Cr from the South Group

A day after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the central probe agency on Friday produced him to a trial court. The ED in its remand application termed Kejriwal a ‘kingpin’ and ‘key conspirator’ and claimed that he was directly involved in the conspiracy of formulating the 2021-22 excise policy to favour certain individuals and requesting payments from liquor companies in exchange for granting favours under the policy.

“The formulation of this policy was geared towards benefiting the ‘South Group’ and was orchestrated in collaboration with Vijay Nair, Manish Sisodia, and representatives of the South Group,” the ED said in its remand application, as quoted by news agency IANS.

The federal probe agency asked the Rouse Avenue court to keep the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief in custody for 10 days, claiming that he is “vicariously liable” for the party’s offences. “Taking advantage of the fact that he was also CM of Delhi, he used the said post to facilitate the offence of money laundering punishable u/s 4 of PMLA (prevention of money laundering act) by the ‘company’ i.e. AAP,” the ED said in its remand note. The Delhi court remanded Kejriwal to ED’s custody till March 28.

The ED also alleged that Kejriwal received several crores of rupees as kickbacks from the ‘South group’ for the formulation and implementation of the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy. The probe agency submitted before the court that the AAP convenor acted as a ‘middleman’ between the ‘South group’ and the other accused in the liquor scam.

“He demanded ₹100 crore from some accused from ‘South group’ for contesting the Punjab elections,” Additional Solicitor General (ASG) SV Raju, who was appearing for the ED, was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

The central probe agency also claimed that Kejriwal-led AAP received around Rs 100 crore in bribes and that the Delhi CM used his position to utilise proceeds of crime worth around Rs 45 crore from the alleged kickbacks in AAP’s election campaign in Goa in 2022.

“Statements of various persons engaged in the election campaign-related activities by the AAP in Goa have revealed that cash payments were made to them for their work done as survey workers, area managers, assembly managers etc. These persons and activities related to the election campaign were overall managed by Vijay Nair and Durgesh Pathak, AAP, MLA in Delhi,” the central agency said in its submission before the court.

However, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Kejriwal in the court said that ED has no direct evidence against the Delhi CM. “Without there being any material in possession of the Enforcement Directorate on the basis of which Mr Kejriwal can be believed to be guilty of an offence, he is being illegally and arbitrarily arrested by the ED,” Singhvi told the court.

The development comes after Kejriwal was arrested by the ED in the Delhi excise policy-linked money laundering case on Thursday evening. This is the first time in independent India that a sitting chief minister has been arrested.