India | Supreme Court releases opposition leader on bail

(New Delhi) Arvind Kejriwal, chief minister of Delhi and one of the main opponents of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, walked out of prison to cheers on Friday in New Delhi, released on bail by order of the Indian Supreme Court to be able to participate in the legislative elections in progress.

“We must save this country from dictatorship,” the opponent told more than a thousand supporters as he left Tihar prison, in the Indian capital. Mr. Kejriwal was detained in March, accused of financial crimes.

Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta had just granted him bail until 1^er June, the last day of a six-week election, according to an AFP journalist present in court.

“There is no doubt that serious accusations were made, but he was not convicted,” they said in their judgment. “He has no criminal history. He does not constitute a threat to society,” they say.

Crowds immediately gathered outside the headquarters of the Aam Aadmi (AAP, Common Man’s Party) that Mr. Kejriwak co-founded in 2012 to celebrate his imminent release, handing out sweets as is custom.

Supreme Court “to the rescue”

“The Supreme Court has come to the rescue of our constitution and democracy facing an onslaught from the BJP,” Atishi Marlena Singh, a minister in Mr. Kejriwal’s government, told reporters.

His release was conditional on his undertaking not to make any public statements on the charges against him, not to interact with witnesses in the case and not to visit government offices in Delhi.

Nearly a billion Indians were called to take part in the vote from April 19 to April 1^er June, to choose a new government, in the largest democratic exercise in the world.

Many analysts consider Mr. Modi’s victory to be a given, particularly because of the popularity of his Hindu nationalist policy, the country’s religious majority.

Arvind Kejriwal, 55, is one of the leaders of the INDIA opposition alliance – with Rahul Gandhi at the head of the Congress party – formed to compete with Mr Modi in these elections.

He was arrested and taken into custody in March on March 21 by India’s top financial crime agency.

“Tackling opponents”

Mr. Kejriwal’s government is accused of receiving bribes in the awarding of alcohol sales licenses to private companies.

But according to his supporters, the arrest of Mr. Kejriwal, who denies the accusations against him, aims to sideline the prime minister’s opponents.

One of them called the affair a “political conspiracy” orchestrated by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Rallies in support of Mr. Kejriwal were held in many major Indian cities following his arrest.

Chief minister of Delhi for almost a decade, he had shown himself to be a fervent defender of the fight against corruption. He had resisted several summons to be questioned as part of the investigation.

Mr. Kejriwal is one of several opposition leaders to be the subject of a criminal investigation.

Like Rahul Gandhi, 53 — whose father, grandmother and great-grandfather were all prime ministers — who was briefly removed from Parliament last year after being convicted of defamation.

He accuses the government of a certain democratic backsliding and criticizes its support for India’s majority faith, to the detriment of significant minorities worried about their future, including 210 million Muslim Indians.

On the other hand, the release on bail of Hemant Soren, former chief minister of the state of Jharkhand (East), arrested for corruption in February in a separate case, was refused Friday by the same two judges of the Supreme Court who granted it to Mr. Kejriwal.

Rights activists and the opposition accuse Mr. Modi’s government of exploiting justice for political ends and worry about the shrinking democratic space in India.

According to the American think tank Freedom House, the BJP “has increasingly used government institutions to attack political opponents.”