Delhi Court extends BRS leader K Kavitha ED remand till March 26 in Delhi excise PMLA case

The Special Judge Kaveri Baweja while extending the police custody, sought the Enforcement Directorate's response on the bail plea moved for K Kavitha.

Advocate Nitesh Rana appeared for K Kavitha vehemently opposed the ED remand plea and moved a regular bail plea.

While seeking custodial remand, ED's Special Counsel Zoheb Hossain along with Naveen Kumar Matta and Simon Benjamin submitted that all the conditions have been complied with, and medical examination every 24 hours happened. Once she had high BP, medication was provided. Her statement was recorded, and 4 other person's statements were also taken.

Several Co-accused's statements were also confronted. The mobile data has been analyzed. She was confronted with a May 23 forensic report that showed the deletion and formatting of data.

The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) arrested K Kavitha MLC, Telangana Legislative Council on March 15, 2024, in the case of the Delhi Liquor Policy Scam.

"A search was also conducted at the residence of K Kavitha in Hyderabad. During the search proceedings, the ED officials were obstructed by the relatives and associates of K Kavitha," said ED in a statement.

The ED investigation revealed that K Kavitha along with others conspired with the top leaders of AAP including Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia to get favours in the Delhi Excise policy formulation and implementation. In exchange for these favours, she was involved in paying Rs. 100 Crore to the leaders of AAP.

By the acts of corruption and conspiracy in the formulation and implementation of Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22, a continuous stream of illegal funds in the form of kickbacks, from the wholesalers was generated for the AAP.

"Further, K Kavitha and her associates were to recover the proceeds of crime paid in advance to AAP and to generate profits/proceeds of crime from this entire conspiracy," stated ED.

To date, the ED has conducted searches on 245 locations across the country including Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and other places. 15 Persons including Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh and Vijay Nair from AAP have been arrested in the case so far.

ED has filed one Prosecution Complaint and 5 Supplementary Complaints in the case so far.

Further, out of the Proceeds of Crime generated, assets worth Rs. 128.79 Crore have been traced so far and have been attached vide Provisional Attachment Orders dated 24.01.2023 and July 3, 2023. Both the attachment orders have been confirmed by the Adjudicating Authority, New Delhi.

ED has filed its first chargesheet in the case. The agency said it has so far undertaken nearly 200 search operations in this case after filing an FIR taking cognisance of a CBI case which was registered on the recommendation of the Delhi Lieutenant Governor.

"The CBI inquiry was recommended on the findings of the Delhi Chief Secretary's report filed in July showing prima facie violations of the GNCTD Act 1991, Transaction of Business Rules (ToBR)-1993, Delhi Excise Act-2009, and Delhi Excise Rules- 2010," officials had said.

The ED and the CBI had alleged that irregularities were committed while modifying the Excise Policy, undue favours were extended to licence holders, the licence fee was waived or reduced and the L-1 licence was extended without the competent authority's approval. The beneficiaries diverted "illegal" gains to the accused officials and made false entries in their books of account to evade detection, the probe agencies said.

As per the allegations, the Excise Department had decided to refund the Earnest Money Deposit of about Rs 30 crore to a successful tenderer against the set rules. Even though there was no enabling provision, a waiver on tendered licence fees was allowed from December 28, 2021, to January 27, 2022, due to COVID-19, the probe agency said and there was alleged loss of Rs 144.36 crore to the exchequer. (ANI)