‘Suspicion, However Strong, Cannot Replace Proof’: Court Clears Arvind Kejriwal In Excise Policy Case | Top Quotes From Judgment

New Delhi: In a sweeping order discharging former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and 22 others in the Delhi Excise Policy case, the Rouse Avenue Court made a series of sharp observations on investigation, conspiracy, constitutional safeguards and criminal jurisprudence. In his judgment, Special Judge (Prevention of Corruption Act) Jitendra Singh quoted American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr, saying “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

Here are the top quotes from the judgment:

• Suspicion, however strong, cannot take the place of proof. An investigating officer is not expected to act with tactical cleverness or strategic flexibility. He is required to proceed with candour, neutrality and unwavering fidelity to the factual record.
• Such conduct amounts to a conscious abuse of official position and strikes at the very core of the criminal justice system. To permit such conduct to pass without consequence would erode public confidence in the administration of criminal justice and would amount to tacit judicial approval of investigative impropriety, an outcome which the rule of law does not permit.
• The statement relied upon, when read in isolation, does not, on its plain terms, attribute any overtly illegal act. A conspiracy cannot remain unanchored. It must rest on identifiable material.
• The investigating agency may be granted some latitude in proving the manner in which a conspiracy was executed. But such latitude does not extend to foundational facts.
• The law accords primacy to the document itself.
• The statement of an approver is inherently suspect and is to be received with great caution.
• The repeated examination of the approver over a period of one year… demonstrates that what was projected as a complete disclosure gradually devolved into a series of incomplete and evolving versions.
• Judicial silence would itself amount to abdication of duty.
• Fairness in investigation is a constitutional mandate that restrains the exercise of State power and operates as a safeguard against arbitrary or capricious prosecutorial conduct.
• The balance between the power of the investigating agency and the right to life and personal liberty is not a matter of legislative grace, but a constitutional command.
• Pre-trial detention does not itself substitute the punishment.
• Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
• Fiat justitia ruat caelum: Let justice be done though the heavens may fall.
• It is only by remaining anchored to these ideals that the confidence of the citizen in the administration of justice is preserved,

The order was pronounced on Friday by the Special Judge (PC Act), Rouse Avenue Court, discharging all 23 accused in the matter

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