P Chidambaram has been
in custody since his dramatic arrest televised live by a team of Central Bureau
of Investigation officers late on August 21.
P Chidambaram, arrested from his Jor Bagh house in
central Delhi in August, was granted bail by the Supreme Court
on Wednesday in the money laundering case linked to the INX Media case.
Economic offences fall under the category
of grave offences but bail should not be denied in all economic offences, said
Justice AS Bopanna who read out the verdict for the three-judge bench.
The top court’s
order implies that the former finance and home minister can soon walk out of
Tihar prison. The bench led by Justice R Banumathi, which accepted his appeal
for bail on Wednesday in the case probed by the Enforcement Directorate, had
earlier in October granted him bail in a related case investigated by the Central Bureau of
Investigation.
But
Chidambaram cannot leave the country without the permission of the special
court trying his case. Justice Bopanna said Chidambaram will also have to
cooperate in the investigation and not make any statements to the press relating
to the case.
The court order also explicitly mentioned
that Chidambaram should not attempt to influence the witnesses or tamper with
the evidence.
The Centre, which had fielded its second
most-senior law officer Tushar Mehta to contest Chidambaram’s bail request, had
asked the court to keep Chidambaram in jail on grounds that there were
witnesses who had backed out due to the former minister’s influence.
Chidambaram’s son Karti, who is also an
accused in the INX Media case, welcomed the verdict. “Phew. At last after 106
days,” he tweeted. The Congress counted the verdict as an instance of truth
finally prevailing while Congress leader Shashi Tharoor insisted that the court
shouldn’t have kept the Rajya Sabha member in jail for so long. “But justice
delayed is justice denied. This should have been granted much earlier. Nothing
is different from three months ago,” Tharoor tweeted.
P Chidambaram, who turned 74 during his
incarceration has been in custody since his dramatic arrest televised live by a
team of Central Bureau of Investigation officers late on August 21. Chidambaram
had just addressed a media briefing to declare that he wasn’t in hiding and
headed home where CBI officers scaled the wall and whisk him away to the CBI
headquarters where he was finally placed under arrest.
The CBI was investigating Chidambaram in a
case relating to alleged irregularities in Foreign Investment Promotion Board
(FIPB) clearance granted to the INX Media group for receiving overseas funds of
Rs. 305 crore in 2007, during his tenure as the finance minister.
He was granted bail by the top court’s
bench of three judges on October 22. But by that time, the Enforcement
Directorate had arrested him in the money laundering case.
In his arguments for bail, P Chidambaram
who was represented by senior lawyers Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi had
contended that the serial arrests by the two federal agencies were timed to
prolong the time spent in judicial custody.
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