The Punjab and Haryana high court on Tuesday granted regular bail to M3M managing director (MD) Roop Bansal in a money laundering case by terming his arrest as “illegal”.Relying on the Supreme Court’s October 3 orders granting bail to two other directors of the M3M group – Pankaj Bansal and Basant Bansal, the high court held that since the case of Roop Bansal was the same as that of Pankaj Bansal, in so far as the non-conveying of the grounds of arrest in writing was concerned, the only conclusion which this court arrives at is that the arrest of Roop Bansal was also illegal and cannot be sustained.
The high court also made it clear that once the arrest itself is held to be illegal, all other subsequent actions would be of no consequence and would have to fail.
“In so far as the orders of remand are concerned, the same also do not clear the test laid down by the SC and Section 19 of the PMLA. No doubt, the court concerned did observe that all mandatory provisions had been complied with but as observed by the apex court, the orders especially the first order of remand dated June 9 do not mention that the court had perused the grounds of arrest to ascertain as to whether the ED had recorded reasons to believe that the petitioner was guilty of an offence under the PMLA and that there was proper compliance with the mandate of Section 19 of the PMLA,” the court observed while giving relief to the developer.
The division bench comprising Justice Arun Palli and Justice Vikram Aggarwal of the high court passed these orders while allowing the petition filed by Roop Bansal for regular bail.
Roop Bansal was arrested by the ED in June. His arrest was linked to the case registered by the anti-corruption bureau (ACB), Haryana, involving former CBI judge Sudhir Parmar and his nephew Ajay Singh Parmar.