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New Delhi: Going by its chargesheet, the CBI’s case in the Delhi liquor policy matter hinges “largely on surmises, conjectures and inferential leaps unsupported by cogent material”, the trial court ruled on Friday (February 28) while discharging all 23 accused, including former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia.

Holding with “no hesitation” that the material put on record by the CBI “does not disclose even a prima facie case, much less any grave suspicion”, the Rouse Avenue court declared that the “excise policy case … is wholly unable to survive judicial scrutiny and stands discredited in its entirety”.

The CBI has reportedly filed an appeal against the order in the Delhi high court, arguing per a statement quoted in the press that “several aspects of the investigation have either been ignored or not considered adequately” by the trial court.

While Kejriwal and Sisodia’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) celebrated the order and along with other opposition parties blamed the BJP-led Union government for politicising investigation agencies, the saffron party’s IT chief Amit Malviya has said that the judgment is a “miscarriage of justice”.

Special judge Jitendra Singh in Friday’s order said that the CBI “failed to place any material which, even prima facie, suggests that” the 2021-22 Delhi liquor policy “was manipulated, altered or engineered to confer any undue or unlawful benefit upon any private individual or the so-called ‘South Group’”.

“On the contrary,” it said, the policy “was the outcome of a consultative and........

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