Delhi Court extends judicial custody of BRS leader K Kavitha till April 23

The Rouse Avenue Court on Tuesday extended the judicial custody of Bharat Rashtra Samithi BRS MLC K Kavitha till April 23 2024 in relation to the excise policy money laundering caseThe Special Judge Kaveri Baweja allowed the plea of the Enforcement Directorate stating that shes made attempts to influence the witnesses and tampered with evidence and hence her judicial custody should be extended by 14 daysAdvocate Nitesh Rana appeared for K Kavitha and opposed the ED plea stating that theres nothing new since she was arrested there are no new grounds The application doesnt mention anythingMeanwhile the Court had refused to permit K Kavitha to address personallyorally and said she could give her submissions in written formAdvocate Zoheb Hossain along with Naveen Kumar Matta and Simon Benjamin appeared for the Enforcement Directorate in the case while Advocates Nitesh Rana Deepak Rana and Mohit Rao appeared for accused K KavithaRecently the same court had allowed the CBI plea to quizexamine K Kavitha during judicial custody in the Tihar Jail on any day of the coming weekCBI through the application sought court permission to interrogate quiz and record the statement of BRS Leader K Kavitha regarding WhatsApp chats recovered from Buchi Babus phone and documents to a Land deal post which 100 crores were allegedly paid to Aam Aadmi Party in KickbacksThe 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 on March 15 2024 During the search proceedings the ED officials were obstructed by the relatives and associates of K Kavitha said ED through a statementED 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 AAPThrough acts of corruption and conspiracy in the formulation and implementation of Delhi Excise Policy 202122 a continuous stream of illegal funds in the form of kickbacks from 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 or proceeds of crime from this entire conspiracy stated EDTo date the ED has conducted searches on 245 locations across the country including Delhi Hyderabad Chennai Mumbai and other places 15 people including Manish Sisodia Sanjay Singh and Vijay Nair from AAP have been arrested in the case so farED has filed 1 Prosecution Complaint and 5 Supplementary Complaints in the case so farFurther out of the proceeds of crime generated assets worth Rs 12879 crore have been traced so far and have been attached via provisional attachment orders dated January 24 2023 and July 3 2023 Both the attachment orders have been confirmed by the adjudicating authority in New DelhiED 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 cognizance of a CBI case that was registered on the recommendation of the Delhi Lieutenant GovernorThe CBI inquiry was recommended on the findings of the Delhi Chief Secretarys report filed in July showing prima facie violations of the GNCTD Act 1991 Transaction of Business Rules ToBR1993 Delhi Excise Act2009 and Delhi Excise Rules 2010 officials had saidThe 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 L1 licence was extended without the competent authoritys 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 saidAs 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 COVID19 the probe agency said and there was an alleged loss of Rs 14436 crore to the exchequerThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever