The Enforcement Directorate has moved the Delhi High Court against a trial court order that cleared former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in two criminal complaints tied to his alleged failure to comply with summonses in the excise policy investigation, reopening a procedural fight that had appeared settled in January. The agency’s two petitions are listed before Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma on Wednesday, April 1. The challenge centres on a January 22 ruling by Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Paras Dalal of the Rouse Avenue Courts, who acquitted Kejriwal in the summons cases after holding that the ED had not established deliberate disobedience beyond reasonable doubt. Material available from the order indicates the trial court also examined the manner of service of summonses and the evidentiary basis for the complaints before ruling in Kejriwal’s favour.
At issue in the High Court is not the broader merits of the excise policy allegations themselves, but whether Kejriwal could lawfully be prosecuted for failing to appear after repeated ED notices issued under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The agency has argued that he intentionally avoided questioning, raised objections it considers untenable and created grounds for not attending. The trial court, by contrast, found the prosecution fell short of proving intentional non-compliance, a distinction that now goes to the heart of the appeal.
The legal move lands at a politically sensitive moment because the excise policy litigation has already splintered into several tracks. One branch concerns the ED’s money-laundering investigation and summons-related complaints; another concerns the Central Bureau of Investigation’s corruption case over the now-scrapped liquor policy. A Delhi court on February 27 threw out the corruption case against Kejriwal and other accused for lack of sufficient ground to proceed, but that ruling too has come under challenge, underlining how the dispute remains live despite setbacks suffered by investigators in the trial court.
Kejriwal’s legal and political position has shifted sharply since his arrest in 2024. He was detained first in the ED matter and later by the CBI in the linked corruption probe, with the litigation moving through trial courts, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court over arrest, bail and the scope of investigative powers. By 2026, the courtroom focus had widened from questions of custody to whether the underlying cases could survive judicial scrutiny. That context matters because the ED’s appeal over skipped summons is part of a broader institutional effort to preserve at least some portion of the enforcement architecture built around the excise probe.
For the ED, a reversal in the High Court would restore two complaints that had symbolic as well as procedural value. Investigative agencies often treat non-compliance with summonses as a test of authority, particularly in politically charged financial crime matters where attendance, document production and statements can shape the course of a case long before charges are framed. For Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party, the acquittal had offered a narrower but important legal foothold: that contesting the validity of summonses is not the same as wilfully defying them, and that criminal liability cannot be presumed merely from non-appearance.
The High Court hearing is likely to turn on a close reading of criminal intent, service of process and the threshold for appellate interference in an acquittal. Courts are typically cautious in overturning acquittals unless the lower court’s reasoning is shown to be perverse, legally flawed or unsupported by the record. That gives Kejriwal a procedural advantage from the January order, but it does not end the ED’s chance of reviving the complaints if the High Court concludes that the trial judge misread the evidence or imposed an unduly exacting standard at a preliminary stage.