Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Oct 11: Anil Deshmukh, a former Maharashtra home minister, was granted bail by the Bombay High Court in a money laundering case and the Supreme Court upheld that decision on Tuesday.
A Bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Hima Kohli said that it will not interfere with the High Court order, thus refusing relief to Enforcement Directorate.
However, the court made it clear that as the Bombay High Court’s findings in its judgement were intended to determine whether Deshmukh was eligible for bail, they would have no bearing on the trial or any further proceedings.
“Since the observations in the High Court order are only confined to if he was entitled to bail, we clarify that they will not affect the merits of the trial or any other proceedings. Having said that, we will not interfere with the HC order granting bail and dispose of this SLP,” the Court ordered.
On October 4, the Bombay High Court granted bail to Deshmukh in the money laundering case that the ED is looking into. In an appeal against the High Court ruling, the Enforcement Directorate has filed a petition with the Supreme Court.
At today’s hearing, Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta, who was representing the ED, said that the High Court had drawn the wrong inferences about the co-accused former police officer Sachin Waze, who later became an approver in the case.
The High Court had ruled that there was insufficient evidence to support Waze’s claims that $1.71 crore was moved between the months of February and March 2021 and purportedly extorted from the proprietors of the bars and given to Deshmukh’s personal assistant.
The Court, however, said that it is only bail and not on the merits of the case and will interfere with the High Court order only if it is perverse.
