Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal won’t appear for questioning today in Delhi liquor policy case, the Aam Aadmi Partry said. AAP said that the summons issued by the Enforcement Directorate were illegal and the only aim is to arrest Mr Kejriwal.

This was the third notice to Mr Kejriwal, also the AAP’s national convenor, after he refused to appear before the probe agency on two earlier summons for November 2 and December 21.

The Aam Aadmi Party asserted that Mr Kejriwal was ready to cooperate with the agency but claimed that the summons was sent with the intention of arresting him.

“Why has the notice been sent right before elections? The notice is an attempt to stop Kejriwal from campaigning in elections,” the party alleged.

The AAP chief had been questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation in connection with the case in April, but had not been made an accused by the agency.

Ever since the first summons was issued by the Enforcement Directorate, there has been intense speculation that the Delhi chief minister would be arrested by the agency after his questioning. Several leaders from the AAP have also issued statements along similar lines.

Former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia was arrested in connection with the case in February, and AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh was taken into custody in October.

A video has emerged on social media showing a SUV swerving on the side of a road in Delhi in an apparent attempt to hit some people.

A first information report (FIR) has been filed over the incident that happened near Signature Bridge in north Delhi on Tuesday.

Ram Chand, 34, who runs a small eatery near the bridge, in his complaint said two men who came on a Mahindra NuvoSport SUV asked for two glasses of water.

After serving them, when he asked for Rs 5, the two men allegedly refused to pay, which soon led to a heated exchange. The two men then thrashed Mr Chand, the complaint said.

The video of the incident shows the SUV taking a U-turn and coming in a high speed on the wrong side of the road. It swerves towards the pavement where some people were standing and throwing stones at the SUV. The driver makes another sharp U-turn before leaving the area.

The owner of the SUV has been identified as Mohd Habib. The police said they are searching for the two men who came in the vehicle.

In a huge victory for the Adani Group, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said the report by the OCCRP – an organisation funded by billionaire George Soros, among others – can’t be the basis for doubting the capital markets regulator SEBI’s investigation into the Hindenburg case.

Delivering the judgment, a Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said there were no grounds to transfer the probe to a special investigation team (SIT).

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has investigated 22 out of the 24 cases linked to the US-based short seller Hindenburg Research’s allegations. The Supreme Court gave the SEBI three months to complete investigation in the remaining two cases.

The Supreme Court also ordered the government and SEBI to check whether Hindenburg has ignored rules in shorting the market and to take action accordingly.

“The reliance on the OCCRP report is rejected and the reliance on a third-party organisation report without any verification cannot be used as proof. There are no grounds to transfer the probe in this case from SEBI,” Chief Justice Chandrachud said in the judgment, referring to the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

The judgment reflected what the Supreme Court told lawyer Prashant Bhushan on November 24, that the Hindenburg allegations and the OCCRP report targeting the Adani Group cannot be treated as gospel.

“Reliance on newspaper reports and third-party organisations to question the statutory regulator (SEBI) does not inspire confidence. They can be treated as inputs. but not conclusive evidence to doubt SEBI’s probe,” the Supreme Court said today.

“Before concluding, public interest jurisprudence was developed to provide access to ordinary citizens… petitions that lack adequate research and rely on unsubstantiated reports cannot be accepted,” the court said.

The petitions on the issue were filed by lawyers Vishal Tiwari and ML Sharma, Congress leader Jaya Thakur and activist Anamika Jaiswal. The petitions had claimed the Adani Group inflated its share prices, and that the shares of some group entities had fallen sharply after the report by short-seller Hindenburg Research on January 24 last year.

The Adani Group had termed the report a “malicious combination of selective misinformation and concealed facts relating to baseless and discredited allegations to drive an ulterior motive”.

The Supreme Court, explaining why it denied the request to transfer the probe to an SIT, said the investigation should be transferred only under exceptional circumstances, and such a power can’t be used without a strong, logical justification.

A key learning from the Hindenburg row is to plug gaps for the benefit of Indian investors, the Supreme Court said, and ordered the Centre and the SEBI to use the committee’s suggestions to strengthen the investors.

In the last hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who appeared for SEBI, had said it had completed looking into 22 of the 24 cases of suspected transactions, and information from agencies abroad was awaited for the remaining two.

A separate committee appointed by the Supreme Court that looked into India’s regulatory mechanism to protect investors, in its report submitted in May last year, had also given a clean chit to the Adani Group.

It had said there was no regulatory failure on the part of SEBI, and no price manipulation on the part of the Adani Group. The conglomerate had taken necessary steps to comfort retail investors amid severe market turmoil following the publication of the Hindenburg report, the committee had said.

In its response to the Hindenburg report, the Adani group had called it a “selective and manipulative presentation of matters already in the public domain to create a false narrative”.

“This is not merely an unwarranted attack on any specific company but a calculated attack on India, the independence, integrity and quality of Indian institutions, and the growth story and ambition of India,” the group had said in a statement. 

(Disclaimer: New Delhi Television is a subsidiary of AMG Media Networks Limited, an Adani Group Company.)