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Karti moves Delhi HC over rejection of anticipatory bail
Justice Poonam A Bamba of the high court will hear the matter on Monday. A special CBI court, on Friday, rejected the Congress MP's anticipatory bail plea.
Congress MP Karti Chidambaram moved the Delhi high court on Saturday, challenging the trial court’s June 3 order denying him pre-arrest bail in a case registered by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the alleged Chinese Visas scam.
Also Read | Visa case: Special CBI court rejects Karti Chidambaram's anticipatory bail plea
The matter is listed for hearing on Monday before Justice Poonam A Bamba of the high court.
The federal agency had recently registered a money-laundering case against Karti and at least two others in the alleged scam of ₹50 lakh on the issuance of visas to 263 Chinese nationals in 2011 when his father P Chidambaram was the Union home minister.
The case was registered based on a first information report (FIR) registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on May 17. The agency alleged that Karti, abusing the official position of his father, granted project visas to the Chinese in exchange for ₹50 lakh.
The CBI also alleged that approval for re-use of more than 250 project visas had been granted by the then Union home secretary and the then Union home minister Chidambaram, and the same had been granted “in utter and gross violation because the prescribed guidelines did not have any provision for such re-use of the project visas”.
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On Friday, while rejecting the anticipatory bail, Special judge MK Nagpal said that despite there being no specific provision contained in the guidelines for permitting the reuse of project visas, approval was granted “blanketly”, compromising the security of the country.
“….approval for re-use of more than 250 Project Visas to Chinese Nationals was granted “blanketly” against payment or acceptance of a bribe amount of ₹50 Lacs and not only a threat was posed to the said power project being established by M/s TSPL, but even the security of the country was compromised by the above illegal acts of the accused, which have been committed in furtherance of a larger conspiracy,” the judge said in a 30-page order, which was released on Saturday.
The court, while denying relief to Karti, his CA S Bhaskar Raman and co-accused Vikas Makharia, said that sufficient documentary evidence in the form of an exchange of e-mails between the three accused was collected by the probe agencies.
Noting the previous criminal antecedents of the accused, the court said that even though Makharia does not have any criminal background, the two other accused, Karti and Bhaskar Raman, have four cases registered against them by the CBI and the ED in connection with the INX Media and Aircel Maxis cases.
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“…they both were even arrested in one of the cases and were subsequently granted regular bail, though anticipatory bail was granted to them in the other cases,” the court said.
The agencies have alleged that all the cases, including the previous ones, have a similar modus-operandi where approvals were granted for some financial transactions against the existing guidelines and policies for illegal considerations or bribes and Bhaskar Raman was involved even in transactions of those cases for payment of a bribe to Karti for influencing his father, who was holding another portfolio of Union minister at that time, for granting those approvals.
The judge also accepted the submission of the ED counsel that the actual magnitude or volume of the processed or laundered amount of money in the present case is yet to be established during the investigation.
