CBI intruded into our work under political pressure, says AAP govt

Perturbed over the CBI raids at the office of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's principal secretary, Delhi government today charged the probe agency with conducting the searches under "undue political pressure" and "intruding" in its working.

The AAP government, in its submission before Delhi High Court, also accused CBI of raiding the office of Rajendra Kumar, located next to the Chief Minister's office in the Delhi Secretariat, in "unprecedented haste" and "indiscriminately" seizing documents, an act which smacked of "vindictiveness and arbitrariness".

Opposing CBI's plea seeking stay and quashing of a trial court's direction to return some documents seized by it during the December 15, 2015 raid, the AAP government said, "CBI has filed the frivolous, baseless, vexatious and merit less petition with obtuse motives and the same is liable to be dismissed with heavy cost."

The Delhi government's affidavit, which was filed after Justice P S Teji sought their stand on CBI's petition, said the raid at Delhi Secretariat was "not only devoid of merit but also smacked of vindictiveness and arbitrariness".

"In the instant case, CBI proceeded and acted with unprecedented haste for the obvious obtuse reason under undue political pressure in as much as CBI failed to requisition the relevant files to verify the allegation, at first instance from Chief Vigilance Officer (CVO) of the concerned department which were under scanner in FIR/RC (regular case).

"If CBI was to follow the rules, law and laid down statutory procedures and guidelines, then there was absolutely no need to raid at the said premises and much less seize

indiscriminately the documents unrelated to the case," the 38- page reply, filed through Delhi government's senior standing counsel Rahul Mehra and standing counsel Richa Kapoor, said.

They said the petition filed by CBI was an "abuse of process of law, not maintainable and is liable to be dismissed

at the threshold".

The trial court's special judge on January 20 had also castigated the CBI for flouting its own manual by seizing documents without showing how they were related to the alleged graft case against Kumar.

CBI, in its petition, had claimed that the Special CBI Judge had failed to appreciate that the Delhi government has already obtained photocopies of the documents seized and thus the order of returning the documents was "wholly misconceived".