New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a notice on a bail plea by Satyendar Jain, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and former cabinet minister in the Delhi government, in a money laundering case.
Senior advocate A.M. Singhvi, representing Jain, submitted before a bench comprising A.S. Bopanna and Hima Kohli that his client has extreme health problems, he has lost 35 kgs and is a skeleton now.
The apex court issued notice on Jain’s plea and also gave him liberty to move the court’s vacation bench seeking urgent listing of his plea against a Delhi High Court judgment denying him bail. The bench said, “Issue notice…liberty to move vacation bencha.” Additional Solicitor General S.V. Raju appeared for the Enforcement Directorate.
In April this year, the Delhi High Court had dismissed Jain and his two aides’ bail pleas in a money laundering case being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma said that Jain is an influential person and cannot be said to have satisfied the twin conditions for bail under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
“The simple fact is the CBI has filed a case of disproportionate assets (DA). The present court cannot go into the validity of these proceedings. Facts show that certain DA were masked. The court has to see the prima facie case. The broad probabilities indicate that the companies associated with him are controlled and managed by him. Learned special judge order (rejecting bail to Jain) does not have any perversity. Order is well reasoned,” the judge said.
Jain has been in custody since May 30 last year. A trial court had, on November 17, 2022, dismissed the leader’s bail application.
According to the trial court, it has prima facie come on record that Satyendar Jain was “actually involved” in hiding the proceeds of crime by paying cash to entry operators based in Kolkata and then bringing the money into three companies against the sale of shares to demonstrate that their revenues were clean.
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