Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Court on Tuesday directed the city police to register an FIR against AAP National Convenor and former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, along with others, in a case related to the alleged misuse of public funds. The court has set a deadline of March 18 for the police to submit a compliance report.
Fresh trouble for Kejriwal
Kejriwal and other AAP leaders are in trouble for allegedly misusing public funds to install large hoardings in Delhi’s Dwarka area in 2019. The complaint, originally filed in 2019, accuses Kejriwal, former AAP MLA Gulab Singh, and Dwarka Councillor Nitika Sharma of spending taxpayer money on political advertisements in the form of large billboards.
Case revived after initial dismissal
In September 2022, a metropolitan magistrate dismissed the complaint. However, the sessions court later overturned the decision and instructed the magistrate to reconsider the case.
Following this, Special Judge Vishal Gogne, in an order passed in January, observed that the previous dismissal had failed to determine whether the alleged offence was cognisable. This paved the way for the magistrate to direct the registration of an FIR under Section 156(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), which empowers courts to order police investigations into cognisable offences.
