Pune: After 17 months, former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia has got a big relief. The Supreme Court has granted him the bail in cases registered against him by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the now-scrapped excise policy scam.

The court observed: “It is high time trial courts, High Courts recognise principle of bail is rule and jail is exception.”

'Whole country is happy', said Raghav Chadha after SC granted bail to Manish Sisodia.

“The whole country is happy today after Manish Sisodia ji, the hero of Delhi’s education revolution, got bail. I express my gratitude to the honourable Supreme Court from the bottom of my heart. Manish ji was kept behind the bars of the jail for 530 days. His crime was that he gave a better future to the children of the poor,” he wrote in a post on X.

Unlike CM Arvind Kejriwal who remains in jail, Sisodia will walk out of jail.

The SC has made it clear that the ‘triple test’ of the PMLA will not apply to Mr Sidodia as he had been incarcerated for 17 months. The SC said there was q delay in trial.

 “It appears that the trial courts and high courts appear to play safe in grant of bail,” the bench said.

The CBI had arrested Mr Sisodia under the Prevention of Corruption Act on February 26 2023. 

The ED had arrested him under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act on March 9 the same year. 

After the Delhi High Court dismissed his bail application in May, Mr Sisodia had moved the Supreme Court. 

On October 10, 2023, the SC had dismissed his application for bail. However, it had raised doubts about some of the charges the ED had levelled against him.

 The SC allowed Mr Sisodia to file a fresh bail application if the trial was drawn out.

On June 4, a vacation Bench of the court refused to entertain Sisodia’s bail pleas after the government assured that the chargesheet would be filed within a month.