Delhi High Court on Friday stayed a trial court’s grant of bail to chief minister Arvind Kejriwal until the bench had pronounced its verdict on the Enforcement Directorate’s challenge to the bail order.

“I am reserving the order (on the ED’s petition) for two to three days. Till pronouncement of the order, the operation of the trial court order will remain stayed,” the vacation bench of Justice Sudhir Kumar Jain said.

Kejriwal, the Aam Aadmi Party convener, will remain in Tihar jail for now. The trial court had on Thursday granted him bail in a money-laundering case linked to his government’s now-scrapped liquor policy. The ED then challenged the bail in the high court.

Kejriwal’s wife Sunita slammed the ED’s appeal against her husband’s bail. She accused the Centre of “dictatorship” and the central agency of treating a chief minister as though he were the “most wanted terrorist in India”.

Additional solicitor-general S.V. Raju, representing the ED, earlier told the high court that the trial court never gave him the “full opportunity” to argue his case.

“There cannot be a more perverse order than this (trial court’s). Without going through documents filed by both sides, without giving us an opportunity, the matter is decided,” he said.

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Kejriwal, said the ED’s approach was “deplorable”. He said: “Like Alice in Wonderland, ED has its own understanding of perversity.”

Sunita said the ED had challenged her husband’s bail order even before it had been uploaded on the trial court’s website.

“I would like to share with you all that yesterday your chief minister got bail from the Rouse Avenue Court, the order was to be uploaded in the morning, the order was not uploaded and ED went to the high court to get the order stayed. It is as if Shri Arvind Kejriwal is the most wanted terrorist in India,” she said in a statement.

“Dictatorship in the country is crossing such limits that ED violates someone’s personal liberty and even immediately goes to the high court to get a stay against the bail of an elected chief minister. The decision of the high court is yet to come, we hope that the court will do justice.”