Order

1. The instant bail application has been filed under Section 483 of B.N.S.S. on behalf of accused-petitioner. The accused-petitioner has been arrested in connection with ECIR No.JPZO/29/2023, dated 21.08.2023, registered for the offences punishable under Sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (in short ‘PMLA’).

Submissions made by Learned Counsel for the Petitioner:-

2. The learned senior counsel appearing for petitioner contendsthat the petitioner has been falsely implicated in the present case.Prima facie, no case has been established against the petitioner under Sections 3 and 4 of PMLA. The petitioner was appointed as the Minister of the Public Health Engineering Department (‘PHED’) in November 2021. In contrast, the main co-accused Padam Chand & Mahesh Mittal, who have been alleged to have procured tenders by using a forged IRCON certificate, bribing the officials, accumulated proceeds of crime and had been consistently securing tenders in the PHED since 2019. The petitioner even suspended an official, Vikrant Saxena, for falsely reporting the IRCON certificate as genuine and blacklisted the aforesaid co-accused from applying for or participating in the tender process.

3. The petitioner has been made accused in the alleged crime without any predicate offence, and his name did not appear in the charge sheet submitted against the other co-accused. Additionally, the petitioner's name is also absent from the Enforcement Case Information Report (‘ECIR’). Subsequent FIRs regarding the forgery of the IRCON certificates were filed against the petitioner and the other co-accused after the charge sheet was submitted in the predicate offence. However, the petitioner was granted protection in both the FIR’s by the Hon'ble High Court. It is also contended that similar allegations were investigated in an FIR instituted in the year 2022, and the police submitted a closure report in that case. The filing of these subsequent FIR’s against the petitioner suggests a political vendetta against the petitioner and also indicates that the current complaint appears to be in continuation of the political motivation.

4. Furthermore, the learned counsel for the petitioner argues that the allegations against the petitioner of receiving fifty lakh rupees as proceeds of crime in his son's firm account is not substantiated. The account of the petitioner shows that the said amount constitute as a loan and the same was returned back by the petitioner. The other co-accused has retracted their statements made under Section 50 of PMLA, which cannot be used against the petitioner. Additionally, the statements of the witnesses do not support the prosecution's case. The prosecution heavily relies on these statements; however, the claim that the amount transferred to the petitioner's son's firm belongs to the witnesses damages the case of the prosecution. The prosecution cannot selectively rely on or disown the statements of its witnesses.

5. The counsel also points out that the ECIR was registered in 2022, resulting in several summons being issued. The petitioner sought a reasonable period to appear; however, officials ignored this request and frequently issued summons without providing adequate time for the petitioner to respond. This pattern of issuing frequent summons without allowing reasonable time to appear before the Enforcement Directorate (in short, ‘ED’) suggests a hidden agenda to implicate the petitioner by any means necessary.

6. The bail applications of the other co-accused, namely Piyush, Padam Chand, and Sanjay Badaya, were granted by the honourable Apex Court. In granting bail to Sanjay Badaya, the Apex Court noted that a complaint had already been filed,consisting of numerous documents, which made the conclusion of the trial unlikely in the short term. After, considering the fact that the petitioner has been in custody for more than three months and that a charge sheet has been filed containing voluminous docu