DA case: HC rejects Majithia bail plea, tells VB to wind up probe in 3 months
The bench of justice Tribhuvan Dahiya directed Punjab police to complete the investigation within three months and said Majithia can apply for bail thereafter.
The Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday dismissed the bail plea of Shiromani Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia in a disproportionate assets (DA) case registered by the state vigilance bureau on June 25 on allegations of laundering ₹540 crore of drug money.
However, the bench of justice Tribhuvan Dahiya directed Punjab police to complete the investigation within three months and said Majithia can apply for bail thereafter.
“The petitioner is one of the prominent political figures in Punjab, and has been a cabinet minister for over seven years. The investigating agency has cited about 20 material witnesses, who have been termed vulnerable. In case, the petitioner is to be released from custody at this stage, possibility of his influencing the further course of investigation, trying to cover up the questionable transactions, manipulating the record relating to the same, and influencing the persons/witnesses concerned not to cooperate with the investigating agency, cannot be ruled out,” the court said while rejecting his bail plea filed on September 17.
The court observed that Majithia is accused of serious economic offences and the vigilance has claimed that huge unaccounted money in his bank accounts was found and a further large number of companies were set up through which the financial transactions were carried out “surreptitiously for his benefit”.
It further noted claims of the VB that money has been routed through some foreign entities based in Singapore and Cyprus and further he is directly or indirectly in control of most of these entities with immediate family members, and appears to be the key beneficiary.
“The transactions as well as the assets accumulated by routing the money in the manner aforementioned are being investigated. All this has adverse ramifications for the financial health of the state. Various leads to track money trail are being followed. Not only the role of these companies, but also that of the petitioner’s close associates and financial experts is still under investigation,” it further said, referring to allegations of VB.
The court also noted that the investigators are statedly in the process of accessing crucial records with regard to the “questionable” financial transactions from various banks, financial institutions, and other agencies.
The court underlined that the Supreme Court has emphasised time and again that economic offences constitute a class apart, and for grant of bail the court has to take into account the alleged deep rooted conspiracies to cause huge loss to public exchequer, etc.
The court also rejected his argument that FIR was not maintainable as a similar probe is being conducted in a drugs related case of 2021 against him. It said as the investigating agency claimed to have come across new facts “which appeared to be part of a larger conspiracy pointing to the petitioner’s disproportionate assets and use of ill-gotten money,” it was within its right to register a second FIR and investigate the case. It cannot be termed a mala fide exercise or sheer political vendetta against the petitioner, it added.
The court, however, said that he cannot be kept in custody for an indefinite period, as that would infringe his right to liberty. Also, that the probe agency owes a duty to the state to complete investigation of the case in every respect within a reasonable time. Hence, gave the VB a timeframe to complete the probe.
Majithia, who was arrested on June 25 and is in judicial custody, has been claiming that the case is politically motivated. Multiple cases have been filed to keep him behind bars, he claimed in his plea.
The VB had submitted a 40,000-page chargesheet against Majithia before the Mohali court on August 22 and opposed the bail plea. If released on bail, the VB said, he might influence witnesses.
The DA case stems from a probe being conducted by a Punjab Police special investigation team (SIT) into the 2021 drug case registered against him. In 2021, he was booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act on the basis of a 2018 report of the anti-drug special task force. Probe into that FIR is still pending.
Majithia spent more than five months in Patiala jail in this case and walked out of prison in August 2022 after the high court granted him bail.
