Former Delhi minister Satyendar Jain walked out of Tihar Jail at 8.10pm on Friday to a raucous welcome by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders and supporters after a city court granted him bail in a money laundering case being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), holding that there was “no likelihood” for the trial in the case to commence, “let alone be completed”.
The court of special judge Vishal Gogne, while ordering Jain’s release on a personal bond of ₹50,000, took into consideration the fact that the AAP leader had been incarcerated for a long time. Jain was arrested in May 2022, and has remained behind bars, except for a period of 10 months between May 26, 2023and March 18, 2024, when he was on medical bail.
“In the present proceedings, with charge not yet having been considered and the further investigation of the predicate offence still being underway, it is a reasonable proposition that conclusion of trial is not immediately foreseeable. In sum, from the standpoint of denial of liberty, the pace of proceedings thus far does reasonably indicate that the accused is likely to remain incarcerated for the immediate future and the trial is not likely to be concluded in the following months,” the court said in its order.
“Applicant Satyendar Jain has suffered a long incarceration comprising 18 months and the trial is unlikely to be even commenced, let alone be concluded in the near future,” the bench added.
Jain, the former health minister of Delhi, was greeted outside Tihar by his supporters. He was accused of misusing his position as minister from February 2015 to May 2017 to acquire disproportionate assets worth ₹1.47 crore, and has denied all charges.
“They put us in jail so that common people cannot enter politics and stop corruption… This fight is between a government working for two people versus Arvind Kejriwal. The BJP wants to defame Kejriwal… Atishi will also have to go to jail. Arvind Kejriwal told us that politics is a river of fire and you will have to swim… you will have to go to jail. We will work for the common man, and continue our fight against injustice,” Jain told the gather crowd.
The release of Jain — the last senior AAP leaders who was still imprisoned — will be a boost for the party months before the scheduled start of the assembly elections in the national capital. In the past few months, other AAP leaders released from jail include former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, former deputy CM Manish Sisodia, and party Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh.
Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva said Jain’s bail does not mean acquittal, and questioned the AAP leaders for celebrating.
Delhi CM Atishi, who had come to Tihar to welcome Jain on his release along with Sisodia and Sanjay Singh, said: “The truth has won.”
The court’s order came days after the Delhi high court denied bail to Ankush Jain and Vaibhav Jain – accused in the same case – on September 30, stressing that the prosecution complaint (charge sheet) filed by ED against the two was complete, as it contained all the necessary ingredients.
In its 38-page ruling, the court slammed ED for arresting Jain despite the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) choosing to file a charge sheet against the AAP leader without arrest. The court said that though CBI “seemed” to follow the beaten path by simply filing the charge sheet without arrest, ED lent a twist in the tale by arresting the former Delhi minister in the allegations pertaining to money laundering.
“The court does not wish to remain amiss in observing that it is essentially ED which arrogates to itself the power to determine the loss of liberty of a person simply by arresting him under PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002). It is a cardinal principle of the interpretation of statutes that unreasonable and awkward outcomes must be avoided. It is certainly an unnatural and unreasonable outcome for Satyender Jain to languish in custody for over 18 months … when CBI did not even arrest him in the predicate offence,” the court said.
“ED, as an agency bound by the rule of law and the settled principles governing liberty in the context of bail, can no longer be permitted to wash away precious years of life of an accused by simply pleading that it has the prerogative to arrest,” it added.
ED, represented by Zoheb Hossain, had urged the court to decide Jain’s bail plea with “exclusive reference” to the twin conditions under section 45 of PMLA, and not concerning any right associated with prolonged incarceration and the Supreme Court’s ruling in former deputy CM Manish Sisodia’s case.
Section 45 required courts to conclude that the accused is not guilty of the offence and is not likely to commit the offence while on bail.
Rejecting the contention, judge Gogne held that ED’s contention of divesting the city court from the power to consider bail on the ground of prolonged incarceration was an untenable legal proposition. The court said ED’s plea of abdicating it from constitutional norms is against the currents of judicial education over the past decade, which has sought to imbibe constitutional mooring and constitutional morality in the decision making by the courts of trial.
“Indeed, the soul of much of the adjudication in the expanse of rights ranging from women and child rights to the rights of victim and accused persons lies in constitutional freedoms. Being tasked with adjudicating matters of aggravated gravity, the special courts dealing with offences under the PC Act and PMLA are called upon every day to address nuanced and sublime issues pertaining to constitutionally guaranteed rights and the rule of law itself. This thoughtful exercise cannot be subdued by the hopeful plea of the ED that the trial courts shall sidestep issues pertaining to constitutional rights,” the court held.
Jain had approached the court in September by way of a second bail application, after the city court dismissed his default bail on May 15.
ED subsequently began a probe into the money laundering charges through three companies allegedly linked to him. ED, which attached alleged proceeds of crime worth ₹4.6 crore in the case, alleged that Jain controlled the three companies through his wife, Poonam Jain. It also alleged that Jain transferred money to Kolkata through a hawala channel and got it back from dummy companies in the form of accommodation entries, even though he could not show the source of the money received.
Jain was earlier granted bail by the trial court in a case registered by CBI in September 2019.
(With inputs from Alok KN Mishra)
Leave a Reply