Six summonses were issued to Arvind Kejriwal by the complainant, who is a public servant, however the Delhi chief minister “intentionally omitted to obey the summons and intentionally omitted to attend at the place or time mentioned in the summons. Instead of attending pursuant to the summons, Arvind Kejriwal raised frivolous objections” – this is what the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has said in a special petition to the court.
The agency further said the chief minister has “deliberately created grounds” which clearly indicate that he “intentionally did not want to obey the summons and kept on giving lame excuses which were not only frivolous but made with an intention to make out a false defence”. News18 has exclusively accessed the application.
Kejriwal an ‘accused’: ED in application
Calling Kejriwal an ‘accused’ in the liquor policy scam, the central agency in its application said: “From the replies given by Arvind Kejriwal, accused herein, it is manifest that his intention was to disobey the summons and to create a false pretext to camouflage such intention of disobedience of summons.”
It added: “Despite numerous summonses issued by the complainant and its due service on the respondent, the respondent herein has intentionally omitted and failed to appear pursuant to the summons and directions issued to him on the various dates and has committed an offence under section 174 of IPC by intentionally disobeying the orders of a public servant.”
“That the offence under section 174 IPC is committed with respect to each of the above summons, which is intentionally disobeyed making each of such omission or disobedience a separate offence,” the ED said as it initiated the case under section 174 of IPC (non-attendance in obedience to an order from public servant) of the Indian Penal Code.
The directorate has listed four dates — between October last year and January 2024 — when the summonses were issued but Kejriwal did not comply with them.
According to sources in the agency, the case that ED initiated under Section I74 of IPC has nothing to do with fresh summons. Under this particular case, the court has no jurisdiction to question the “legality” or “validity” of the summons. Countering what Kejriwal mentioned in the press conference on Monday, a senior officer said such cases were initiated by the ED earlier too against senior politicians and their relatives for not honouring summons.
Recently, the directorate initiated similar cases against Rujira Banerjee, wife of Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee, for not honouring consecutive summons.
AAP’s Defence
Calling the summons “illegal”, Kejriwal said their legal validity will now be determined by the court and, until then, the ED has to wait. He added that the ED should now stop sending summons and wait for the court’s direction.
“ED has filed a case against Kejriwal. They should now wait for the judgement of the court,” Priyanka Kakkar, chief national spokesperson of AAP, told News18.
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