The Delhi High Court dismissed the bail plea of jailed former AAP minister Satyendar Jain, on Thursday, in a money laundering case being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The former minister is accused of having laundered money through four companies allegedly linked to him.
The bench of Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma, while dismissing the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader’s bail plea, said Jain is influential and can tamper with the evidence.
The court also rejected the bail pleas of co-accused in the case — Vaibhav Jain and Ankush Jain.
The court said that Satyendra Jain, Vaibhav Jain and Ankush Jain do not satisfy the twin conditions of the bail.
While pronouncing the order, the high court said there was no illegally or infirmity in the trial court’s order by which the bail pleas were dismissed.
Justice Sharma said Satyendar Jain cannot be said to have satisfied the twin conditions for bail under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The high court noted that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a case of disproportionate assets (DA) and the competent court is seized of the matter.
“The present court cannot go into validity of these proceedings. Facts show that certain disproportionate assets were masked. The court has to see the prima facie case. The broad probabilities indicate that the companies associated to him are controlled and managed by him (Satyendar Jain),” it said.
The high court said the special court’s order denying bail does not suffer from any perversity and the order is well reasoned.
Jain was arrested on May 30 last year by the probe agency. The high court had reserved the order on the bail plea on March 21 after hearing arguments of the counsel for the ED and the AAP leader.
Satyendar Jain had earlier submitted that no case was made out against him and he has fully cooperated in the investigation and there was no requirement to continue his incarceration after the filing of the charge sheet.
The AAP leader has challenged the trial court’s November 17, 2022 order by which his bail plea was dismissed on the ground that he was prima facie involved in concealing the proceeds of crime.
Besides him, the trial court had also denied bail to two co-accused — Vaibhav Jain and Ankush Jain — saying that they “knowingly” assisted Jain in concealing the proceeds of crime and were “prima facie guilty” of money laundering.
The high court, which had also reserved its order on the bail pleas of Vaibhav and Ankush, will also pronounce the order on their petitions.
The bail pleas of all three accused were opposed by the ED.
The ED’s counsel had argued that the AAP leader’s stand that there are no proceeds of crime can be “demolished” by the material on record which also shows that he was “in the thick of things”.
In its reply filed in the court, the agency has said that the bail plea of Satyendar Jain, who was a sitting minister at the time of the alleged offence, should be dismissed as his release would obstruct further investigation and there is CCTV footage from Tihar jail, where he is in judicial custody, to show that he is an “influential person” who may influence witnesses and frustrate the proceedings.
The ED had arrested Jain in the money laundering case based on a CBI FIR lodged against Jain in 2017 under the Prevention of Corruption Act. He was granted regular bail by a trial court on September 6, 2019, in the case lodged by the CBI.
“Money laundering is crystal clear. Their case is that Satyendar Jain has nothing to do with it. I have to establish that Satyendar Jain was in the thick of these things,” Additional Solicitor General S V Raju had argued before the high court.
(With PTI inputs)
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