Swati Maliwal assault: Delhi High Court reserves order on maintainability of Bibhav Kumar plea

The Delhi High Court on Friday reserved its decision on whether it should hear the criminal writ petition moved by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's close aide Bibhav Kumar against his arrest in the case alleging that he had assaulted Member of Parliament (MP) Swati Maliwal..Justice Swarna Kanta Sharma heard preliminary arguments on this aspect after Delhi Police said Kumar has an alternative remedy of moving a revision plea against the Magistrate's order who had rejected the petition challenging his arrest. .Justice Navin Chawla had earlier today transferred the matter to Justice Sharma's court, which is the roster bench for cases involving Members of Parliament and Members of Legislative Assemblies (MPs/MLAs).Kumar, who is accused of having assaulted the Rajya Sabha MP at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's official residence, has moved the High Court to declare his arrest illegal and also sought compensation for the same. He has urged the High Court to declare that his arrest was in violation of the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court in the Arnesh Kumar judgment..Opposing the plea, Senior Advocate Sanjay Jain, representing the Delhi Police, argued that Kumar’s plea is not maintainable as the magistrate court had disposed of a similar plea. Kumar should have approached the Sessions Court against the order, Jain said. “Similar non-compliance of Section 41A CrPC was taken by them and it was decided by the order of May 20 by the magistrate court. Alternate remedy is available to them to file a revision petition. If notice is issued on the writ petition here, I will be prejudiced at many levels. There is no urgency shown why they have filed at this stage,” Jain argued..Countering Jain’s arguments, Senior Advocate N Hariharan - who appeared for Kumar - said that their main prayer is to declare the arrest illegal as there has been violation of his Article 21 of the Constitution of India.“In the case of this nature, where nothing was to be recovered, a case where the entire matter was placed before the Station House Officer (SHO) on May 13, the FIR gets registered on 16 May and on 18 May, the arrest is affected. How is arrest done? It is with oblique motive. I filed for anticipatory bail. I started my arguments at 4PM and at 4:15PM, I am arrested. The arrest is affected without arrest memo or grounds of arrest,” Hariharan submitted.The Court was also told that Kumar had himself written to the Investigating Officer (IO) that he is ready to join the investigation and yet he was arrested..Kumar was earlier denied bail by Delhi's Tis Hazari Court on May 27.The Delhi Police arrested Kumar on May 18. He was then remanded to police custody for five days. On May 24, he was sent to judicial custody.Maliwal is a leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). As per the FIR, Kumar hit Maliwal in her chest, stomach and the pelvic area with legs.AAP has countered the MP's allegations and accused of her of being in a conspiracy against the political party.Earlier, some videos had surfaced on social media showing Maliwal having an argument with the security personnel and walking out of the Chief Minister's residence on the day of the alleged assault.