Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia cleared in liquor policy case, Court raps CBI

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Feb 27, 2026: A Delhi court has cleared former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia in a case of alleged corruption in making a new policy to sell liquor in the national capital.

"There was no overarching conspiracy or criminal intent in the excise policy," the court said.

The matter which later came to be known as the Delhi liquor policy case had given a lot of trouble to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief and his aide when they were in power in Delhi.

The case dates back to a liquor policy launched by the AAP government in 2021-22, which the then Kejriwal government had claimed would bring a lot more revenue than the model that existed before that.

The Delhi government later scrapped it.

"We always said that truth ultimately wins. I always used to say that the truth is with us. A sitting chief minister was dragged out of his home and thrown into jail. Mud was flung at us," Kejriwal told reporters outside the court in central Delhi.

The former chief minister, while speaking, broke down.

The AAP’s defeat in the last assembly election was to a large extent attributed to the troubles its top leaders ran into linked to the excise policy.

In the hearing today, the court said the alleged central conspiratorial role played by Kejriwal and Sisodia could not be substantiated. The allegations "failed judicial scrutiny", it said.

The conspiracy theory was such that it "cannot survive against one constitutional authority."
On South Group

The court questioned the use of the words "South Group" by the investigators to refer to whom they alleged were a coterie of politicians and liquor businessmen, instrumental in deciding the contours of the excise policy.

The court questioned what was the intention behind using the words "South Group" to refer to them, and who coined the term.

To this, the CBI replied it was used as a common term for several accused. The judge then noted a significant case in the US which was dismissed because a term was used to refer to a Dominican group.

"I believe the term South Group should not have been used," the judge said.