Bombay High Court grants interim relief to Bhujbal

The Bombay high court on Tuesday granted interim protection from arrest to two sets of different accused, including Pankaj Bhujbal, son of senior NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal in the money laundering case.

Though Justice Sadhana Jadhav was of the view that once summons or non-bailable warrant (NBW) is issued by any court to secure presence of any accused then other courts should not cancel it until it is executed. However, since the vacation bench of the high court has already granted them relief, the judge extended it pending further hearing.

Justice Jadhav was hearing a petition filed by Pankaj, Asif Balwa and Vinod Goenka of DB Realty and four others who have challenged NBW issued by special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court against them.

They have contended that the purpose of issuing summons or NBW is to secure presence of accused during trial and petitioners were always available to the authorities and are cooperating with them. According to them, the court should have first issued summons and then the NBW but the judge had, without any demand from Enforcement Directorate (ED), issued NBW and hence it should be cancelled.

Justice Jadhav also said that a single bench does not have jurisdiction to hear the petition and granted them liberty to move a division bench on Wednesday and extended protection till June 10.

In the meantime, Justice PN Deshmukh also granted interim protection from arrest to 11 other accused in the same case. These accused are seeking pre-arrest bail as the PMLA court has issued NBW against them too.

Pravin Jain, Sanjiv Jain, Chandrasekhar Sarda, Jagdish Prasad Purohit, Bimalkumar Jain, Sanjay Kakade, Kapil Puri, Rajesh Mistry, Vipul Kankaria, Sailesh Mehta and Suresh Jajodia are the accused who were granted relief by the high court.

The ED has alleged that the accused allegedly conspired with Chhagan Bhujbal, former PWD minister, to divert or ‘launder’ the “kickbacks” received by him through their firms.