Delhi Excise Policy: Delhi court rejects bail pleas of five accused, says allegations quite serious

By  Jasleen Kaur February 16th 2023 05:44 PM

New Delhi, February 16: The Rouse Avenue Court on Thursday rejected the bail petitions of five accused, who were arrested in the money laundering probe emerging out of the Delhi government's now scrapped Excise Policy.

While rejecting the bail plea, the Rouse Avenue Court noted that none of the accused deserved to be released on bail in this case at this stage of proceedings as the allegations made against them are quite serious. Special Judge MK Nagpal, while rejecting the bail plea of Vijay Nair, Abhishek Bonipally, Sameer Mahendru, Sarath P Reddy and Binoy Babu, observed that the accused did not even satisfy the triple test as laid down in the case of P Chidambaram vs Directorate of Enforcement being relied upon by defence counsels.

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The court said, "It can be seen from their personal and family history given on record that none of them is a flight risk and further even though the apprehensions being expressed by the prosecution regarding the influencing of witnesses by them may not be true and can otherwise also be taken care of by imposing some conditions, but keeping in view their conduct as reflected on record it will not be possible for this court to hold that they will make no attempt to tamper with the evidence of this case in case they are permanently released on bail as serious allegations of tampering with evidence by way of destruction or change of their mobile phones, various times have already been made by the ED against them and further even the specific allegations of destruction of digital data have also been levelled against the accused P. Sarath Chandra Reddy."
"However, in the considered opinion of this court, the oral and documentary evidence which has already been discussed above and further which has been placed on record along with the two prosecution complaints filed before this court by the ED to date, nowhere warrants such an inference to be drawn therefrom and thus, the prosecution complaints filed against the accused persons by the ED cannot be held to be piecemeal complaints or chargesheets as the investigation qua all of them stands already completed and even specific submissions to this effect are found made in the said complaints, though some further investigation regarding role of other persons involved in the commission of alleged offences and to trace out the complete trail of ill-gotten money is still kept pending," said the court in its order.

Vijay Nair is the former communication head of the Aam Aadmi Party and Sarath P Reddy, Binoy Babu, Sameer Mahendru and Abhishek Boinpally are South-based businessmen.

In the case, the ED and the CBI had alleged that irregularities were committed while modifying the Delhi Excise Policy, undue favours were extended to licence holders, the licence fee was waived or reduced and the L-1 licence was extended without the competent authority's approval. The beneficiaries diverted "illegal" gains to the accused officials and made false entries in their books of account to evade detection.

The FIR in the case was instituted on a reference from the Union Home Ministry following a recommendation from Delhi Lieutenant-Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena. 

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