Panchkula’s special court for money laundering cases on Tuesday gave M3M land development group’s managing director Roop Bansal anticipatory bail in a matter linked to the corruption charges against a former CBI judge.
The 21-page bail order is a setback to the enforcement directorate (ED).PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) special judge Rajeev Goyal gave Bansal a blanket relief by directing the ED to give him at least a 7-day notice for arrest.
Bansal is first to get this kind of a relief from the court, and its roots are in the sequence of events from the arrest to the bail order in favour of his brother, Basant Bansal, and nephew, Pankaj Bansal, who were first to be arrested in June.
The defense counsel questioned the ED’s “intentions and desperation” in arresting all the accused — the three Bansals, Lalit Goyal of realty group Ireo, former CBI judge Sudhir Parmar, and the judge’s nephew, Ajay Parmar. Roop Bansal had secured bail from the Punjab and Haryana high court in the Ireo case, but while he was in custody, the ED had sought his production warrants, an application that became infructuous in October once he got bail.
Consequently, in first week of November, the ED asked Bansal to appear before it on November 10, but he had, meanwhile, moved an application for anticipatory bail before the PMLA court. The hearing of the argument was fixed for November 17 on a request from the ED’s special prosecutors.
On the final day, Bansal’s counsel sought an interim relief, questioning the ED’s intent, but no order was issued. Meanwhile, the ED issued Bansal another notice for recording his statement on November 14.
The court took notice of the ED moves of summoning Bansal when the matter was pending before it. The defense counsel brought the ED application and notices on record for seeking that Bansal statement be recorded during custody in July.
The counsel argued the ED had failed establish any scheduled offense against Bansal, while the charges of favouritism by a public servant was unfounded, as the public servant had never handled the case in official or judicial capacity.
Inviting attention to court’s orders on accused Ajay Parmar’s application for calling certain records, the counsel used it to contest the money laundering charges. Special prosecutors Lokesh Narang and Simon Benjamin had opposed the prayer for anticipatory bail, pointing to seriousness of the accusation that a public servant was bribed to alter the fate of the cases, and claiming it to be evidence of the guilt of money laundering.
They said the applicant had committed another offence after being named in the first ECIR, and so he might commit another if given bail.