NEW DELHI: Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) Chairperson, Swati Maliwal has approached the Delhi High Court against the trial court order of framing of corruption and criminal conspiracy charges against her and others for "prima facie" abusing their official positions to appoint Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) workers to different posts in the women’s rights body during 2015-16.
Maliwal has sought a stay as an interim relief and direction to quash the charges framed by the lower court.
The criminal revision petition filed through Advocate Chirag Madan would come up before the bench of Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani on Friday.
On December 8, Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh at Rouse Avenue Court had ordered the framing of corruption and criminal conspiracy charges against Maliwal besides DCW members Promila Gupta, Sarika Chaudhary and Farheen Malick.
The trial court had said the perusal of minutes of the meetings held on various dates by the DCW — of which all four accused were signatories — were "enough to prima facie point to a strong suspicion that the appointments in question were made by the accused in agreement with each other."
"After all, none of the three accused besides Maliwal ever objected to or gave a dissenting note to the illegal appointments. Rather the decisions were claimed to have been arrived at unanimously in those meetings," the judge said.
He said in the case, "the circumstances prima facie strongly indicate such a conspiracy between the accused persons."
"Accordingly, a strong suspicion does arise against all the four accused persons and the facts do disclose prima facie sufficient material to frame charges against all the four accused persons for offences,” the judge added.
The court ordered the framing of charges against the accused persons under Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC, read with Section 13(1)(d) (criminal misconduct by a public servant) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The case was lodged by the Anti-Corruption Bureau on a complaint by former DCW chairperson and BJP MLA Barkha Shukla Singh.