The Supreme Court earlier on Thursday refused to grant anticipatory bail to the senior Congress leader in an Enforcement Directorate case involving INX Media.
NEW DELHI (IANS) — A court here on Thursday sent former Union Minister P. Chidambaram to 14 days judicial custody in the INX Media case.
The senior Congress leader, who was arrested by the CBI in the case last month and had undergone interrogation, will be lodged in the Tihar Jail till September 19.
Earlier, the Supreme Court on Thursday refused to grant anticipatory bail to the senior Congress leader in an Enforcement Directorate case involving INX Media.
In a 57-page order, a bench headed by Justice R. Banumathi said: “This is not a fit case for grant of anticipatory bail. The investigating agency has to be given enough freedom to probe.”
The court, making an observation on the economic offences, said these offences are serious in nature and anticipatory bail has to be an exception when the investigation is ongoing in such cases.
The court expressed apprehension that the accused if given bail may tamper with the evidence and destroy the money trial.
“Considering the facts and circumstances of the case, in our view, grant of anticipatory bail to the appellant will hamper the investigation and this is not a fit case for exercise of discretion to grant anticipatory bail to the appellant,” said the court while rejecting Chidambaram’s bail plea.
The court observed that the grant of anticipatory bail at this stage would hamper the investigation, and therefore the accused may move regular bail before an appropriate court.
Replying to Chidambaram’s lawyers’ contention contesting the submission of documents in sealed covers in the court, the judge said that the court can peruse the documents in sealed covers to consider bail etc, “but won’t do this on this case so as not to prejudice the case of the accused”.
Though, the court also noted that the right to anticipatory bail cannot be a subject matter of fundamental right under Article 32.
The court observed that in a case of money-laundering where it involves many stages of “placement”, “layering i.e. funds moved to other institutions to conceal origin” and “interrogation i.e. funds used to acquire various assets”, it requires systematic and analysed investigation which would be of great advantage.
The court attributed that the success in such interrogation would be elusive if the accused knows that he is protected by a pre-arrest bail order.
