The recent judgment by a Delhi court discharging Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, and over twenty others from what was sensationally dubbed the “liquor scam” is not merely a legal victory for one political party; it is a resounding triumph for the principle of systemic fairness in India. For over three years, the nation watched as top elected officials were incarcerated, their reputations shredded on the altar of prime-time news, all based on a narrative that a special court has now declared to be built on a foundation of sand. This episode forces a necessary and uncomfortable reckoning with the question: if the accused are not the culprits, who really is responsible for this travesty?
The court’s detailed order leaves little room for ambiguity. It found that the prosecution’s case did not disclose even a prima facie suspicion, let alone the grave suspicion required to frame charges. The elaborate theory of a conspiracy involving a group of businessmen paying kickbacks to political leaders for policy favours was completely dismantled when tested against the evidentiary record. Allegations of a manipulated money trail vanished under scrutiny, with the court noting that the very firms the policy was supposedly tailored for failed to qualify under its conditions. The attempt to link political fundraising to criminality was dismissed as an intrusion into the constitutionally demarcated domain of election expenditure.
So, where does the money trail lead? If the investigation could not prove a single rupee of kickback changed hands for a corrupt purpose, we must look elsewhere for the real perpetrators. The primary culprit is not a businessman or a politician, but a system that allows investigative agencies to be weaponised. The court took the extraordinary step of ordering departmental proceedings against the investigating officer, signalling that this was not a case of incompetence, but perhaps one of motivated investigation. The real “scam” here is the abuse of institutional power—the use of federal agencies not as unbiased fact-finders, but as tools to destabilise a political opposition. The actual money that was squandered is not the alleged thousands of crores in excise revenue, but the incalculable cost to India’s democratic fabric, the trauma inflicted on families, and the taxpayer money spent on a prosecution that never had a leg to stand on.
The discharge of all accused is a powerful reminder that in a constitutional democracy, evidence must trump allegation. The system must now hold accountable those who framed this politically motivated narrative, lest the real culprits—the architects of this conspiracy against due process—walk away free to dismantle another life, another government, another time.
