Supreme Court to hear tomorrow Arvind Kejriwal’s plea against arrest in money-laundering case

New Delhi, Apr 28
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Monday a plea by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal challenging his arrest in a money-laundering case stemming from the alleged excise policy scam.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta is likely to hear the matter.
Kejriwal had earlier told the apex court that his “illegal arrest” in the case constituted an unprecedented assault on the tenets of democracy.
In a rejoinder to the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) reply affidavit filed on his petition challenging his arrest in the case, Kejriwal said the mode, manner and timing of his arrest just before the Lok Sabha election when the Model Code of Conduct had come into play, speak volumes about the “arbitrariness” of the agency.
Kejriwal claimed it is a “classical case” of how the Centre has misused the ED and its wide powers under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act to “crush” the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its leaders.
He claimed that the ED illegally ‘picked up’ a sitting chief minister and the national convener of one of the national Opposition parties, five days after the general elections were announced and the Model Code of Conduct came into force.
He said a level playing field, which is a pre-requisite for ‘free and fair elections’, has clearly been compromised with his arrest.