3 min readNew DelhiMar 3, 2026 08:55 AM IST
Evidentiary value of statements, of “both the witnesses and the approvers, is a subject matter of trial”, the CBI has contended in its revision plea before Delhi High Court, seeking that the order discharging 23 accused in the alleged liquor policy scam be set aside.
A trial court, in its order, had criticised the prosecution’s reliance on the “uncorroborated” and “shifting” statements of approvers and other “accomplice-like” witnesses, while recording that an approver’s statement cannot substitute for foundational facts, and had also noticed that such statements of approvers saw subsequent improvements, all in the absence of independent corroboration of claims made in such statements.
The CBI has argued that the corroborative value attached to such statements are to be seen “when evidence is led to support the charges and not before”.
Additional facts that emerge from statements of approvers “ought not be brushed aside for the simple reason that the terms of tender of pardon to an approver mandate the full and true disclosure by such person for the purposes of evidence”, it argued.
The agency also said TDP MP and liquor baron Magunta Reddy’s statements cannot be read as an accomplice-like statement, as the trial court had observed, since “he is not in a position of an accomplice or an accused” as only a bribe demand was made from him allegedly by AAP.
With Magunta being a prosecution witness, and his son Raghav Magunta made an approver in the case, Magunta had reportedly met Kejriwal to seek support for liquor business under the new policy, whereafter Kejriwal had allegedly assured support in exchange for alleged bribes, to be routed through former BRS leader K Kavitha.
Notably, Kejriwal’s name had appeared in the alleged scam for the first time in Magunta’s statement. The trial court had found that when Magunta’s statement is read in isolation, it “does not, on its plain terms, attribute any overtly illegal act”. It noted that Magunta’s statement “unmistakably discloses his conscious and active participation in the very arrangement which the prosecution seeks to characterise as a criminal conspiracy”. Given the accomplice-like stature, the court had noted that statements by him and his son, an approver, were “self-incriminating in nature”, and thus “the evidentiary value of such a witness is that of accomplice evidence”.
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To support Magunta’s assertion, CBI had relied on his son’s statement, and the trial court had examined whether an accomplice-like witness’ statement can be corroborated by an approver’s statement, and had concluded that such evidence becomes “hearsay”.
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