The Supreme Court today directed CBI to return the documents during the raid at the office of Rajendra Kumar, principal secretary to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

A bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Prafulla C. Pant issued the notice on the Delhi government's plea to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to hand over the documents to the Delhi government that it had seized on December 15, 2015 from Rajendra Kumar's office.

The CBI had seized the documents from Kumar's office during a raid on December 15, 2015, in the wake of the allegations of wrong doing on the part of the said officer.

Soon after the raid, Kejriwal had claimed that his office was raided too, and had linked it to a probe he had ordered against the union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on the allegations of corruption in the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) which Jaitley had headed earlier.

The CBI had denied searching Kejriwal's office.

The high court by its February 10 order had said that in the trial court's order, "error has been committed and jurisdiction has been exceeded in accepting the claim of the return of the documents, selected by the respondent no.1 (government), mentioned in para 8 of the application as it overshadows the investigation".

Setting aside the lower court order, it had said that it is "...neither justifiable nor desirable as the relevancy is to be examined by the investigating officer and not by the court and the same tantamount to interference in the investigation conducted by the investigating officer.

"This court is of the considered opinion that requirement of documents for the purpose of investigation is to be examined and decided by the investigating officer and any direction to interfere in the same is not justified."

The CBI had contended before the high court that it had followed proper procedure for undertaking the search and had claimed that the documents seized from the office of Rajendra Kumar "prima facie reflect criminal conspiracy and criminal misconduct and abuse of official position by the accused people".

ALSO READ:

CBI raids Delhi CM's principal secretary Rajendra Kumar's office following Ashish Joshi's complaint



