Documents seized during raid does not paralyse AAP govt: CBI

CBI today claimed in Delhi High Court that the documents seized during raids at the office of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's principal secretary Rajendra Kumar do not paralyse the functioning of AAP government, as alleged.
The submission in this regard was made before Justice P S Teji by Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who further said that at the "initial stage of investigation relevancy of the documents cannot be disclosed even if known to the probe agency, as it can do harm to the ongoing investigation."
"We (CBI) have collected something which has relevance. At this stage, I (CBI) cannot go into the details of the documents. The documents contain pencil notings. If I give the originals, the same can be tampered with," ASG Mehta submitted.

He further said the documents in CBI possession will "not hamper their (Delhi government) functioning and it cannot be said that these are unrelated documents".
Opposing the special court's finding, the CBI said, "the order has completely demoralised the investigating agency".
Senior advocate Dayan Krishnan, appearing for Delhi government, countered CBI's contention, saying the "agency have picked up documents which have nothing to do with the investigation and it is hampering the government's functioning".

Hearing both side of the arguments, the court reserved its verdict on CBI's plea seeking stay and quashing of a trial court's direction to return some documents seized by it during the December 15, 2015 raids.

While moving the high court, CBI, in its petition, had
claimed that the Special CBI Judge had failed to appreciate that Delhi government has already obtained photocopies of the documents seized and thus the order of returning the documents was "wholly misconceived".
On the contrary, the AAP government said the agency has "miserably failed to explain the relevancy of the documents pertaining to Delhi government which are totally unrelated for the purposes of investigating, either before the trial court or before the High Court, seized indiscriminately by the CBI on December 15, 2015 from the office of the Chief Minister, under the garb of search warrants".

CBI had raided office of Kumar on December 15 last year and registered a corruption case against him and others on the allegations that he had abused his official position by "favouring a particular firm in the last few years in getting tenders from Delhi government department.