On 11th March, the Rouse Avenue Court in Delhi ordered the city police to file a First Information Report (FIR) against former Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) National Convenor Arvind Kejriwal and others in a case involving the misappropriation of public funds. The police have been given until 18th March by the court to produce a compliance report.
“This court is of the considered opinion that the application u/s 156(3) CrPC deserves to be allowed. Accordingly, the concerned SHO (Station House Officer) is directed to register FIR immediately under section 3 of the Delhi Prevention of Defacement of Property Act, 2007 and any other offence that appears to have been committed from the facts of the case,” Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Neha Mittal pronounced.
“This court does not find any merit in the arguments advanced by Ld. APP (additional public prosecutor) for the state that it is impossible to collect any evidence at this stage due to lapse of time and non-availability of any particulars of the printing press. This court cannot presume the fact that ordering investigation will be a futile exercise without even giving a chance to the investigating agency, especially in this era of scientific and technological advancement,” she conveyed.
The judge also pointed out that the action taken report (ATR) was not filed on multiple days despite the court’s repeated orders, which caused the delay in this case. “Quite surprisingly, in the present case, the ATR filed on behalf of the concerned SHO is completely silent on the aspect as to whether the alleged hoardings were present on the date and time alleged by the complainant,” she observed.
Kejriwal and other AAP officials are facing charges of embezzling public funds to erect massive hoardings in the Dwarka neighbourhood of Delhi in 2019. Kejriwal, former AAP MLA Gulab Singh, and Dwarka Councillor Nitika Sharma are accused in the 2019 complaint of using government funds to spend on political advertisements on massive billboards.
A metropolitan magistrate dismissed the complaint on 15th September 2022. This infuriated the complainant, who filed a revision petition. The sessions court, however, later reversed the ruling and provided the magistrate instructions to revisit the matter. The revisionist court sent the case back to a magistrate court on 21st January of this year, instructing it to make a new decision on the application.
Special Judge Vishal Gogne noted that the prior dismissal had not established whether the accused offence was cognisable. The fresh petition was filed under Section 156(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) wherein the magistrate can direct the police to register an FIR and order a probe into a cognisable offence. Shiv Kumar Saxena, the complainant in this case charged Kejriwal with “misusing public money by putting huge size hoardings” in several locations throughout Dwarka.
