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‘No rule one must spend a year in jail for relief’: Supreme Court grants bail in money laundering case

The Supreme Court has said “there was ‘no rule’ that a person accused of money laundering ought to spend a year in jail before being give bail as it allowed the relief to a businessman”.

A Bench of Justices Abhay S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan granted bail to businessman Anwar Dhebar in the alleged ₹2,000 crore liquor scam case and said, “It is not a rule to be in custody for a year to get bail”.

He was arrested in August last year and has spent over nine months in jail. The Supreme Court said the maximum punishment for the offence alleged was seven years, and that the trial against Dhebar was unlikely to start any time soon given the large number of witnesses.

“The appellant was arrested on August 8, 2024. Forty witnesses have been cited. Investigation is in progress. In the predicate offence there are 450 witnesses. In predicate offence cognisance has not been taken. Therefore there is no possibility of trial commencing in near future. The maximum punishment is seven years,” it noted.

Referring to the Senthil Balaji verdict, the Court held Dhebar was entitled to be released on bail with stringent terms and conditions. “He shall surrender passport, if any,” the Bench added.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) counsel urged the Bench not to release the accused on bail saying he was arrested in August last year and it hadn’t even been a year of his custody.

The ED lawyer said the Supreme Court was following the “one-year custody benchmark” to grant bail in various cases and submitted the yardstick ought to be followed in Dhebar’s case.

“The accused,” the ED lawyer said, “was politically connected and an influential person, and his bail would hamper the trial”.

The Supreme Court, however, asked the trial court to release the accused within a week on terms and conditions fixed by the special court. Dhebar, brother of Congress leader and Raipur Mayor Aijaz Dhebar, was the first to be arrested in the money laundering case stemming from an Income Tax department charge sheet filed in connection with alleged tax evasion and irregularities in liquor trade in Chhattisgarh and some other states.

The ED, in the prosecution complaint (chargesheet) submitted in the case in a PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) court in Raipur on July 4, claimed ₹2,161 crore of corruption money was generated in the “liquor scam” that began in 2019 in Chhattisgarh and this amount should have gone to the State Exchequer.

The ED alleged a syndicate comprising senior bureaucrats, politicians, their associates and officials of the State Excise Department had indulged in irregularities.