Delhi High Court: Suresh Kumar Kait, J. rejected the bail plea of the petitioner, accused of fraud, after finding him to be at risk of tampering evidence pending against him.
Petitioner a Managing Director and CEO of Religare Enterprises Limited, was found to be accused of fraud worth over Rs 2000 crores by means of extending fraud loans and falsifying books of accounts. He and another member (Anil Saxena) of his Company were arrested on 10th October, 2019, under the course of investigation. Anil Saxena, was further granted bail but Kavi Arora was refused. Hence, he came before the Delhi High court under under Section 439 read with Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 seeking the relief of regular bail.
Senior Advocate, Puneet Bali on behalf of the petitioner with Vibhav Jain, Aditya Soni and Mayank Datta, Advocates and the State was represented by Amit Chadha, APP for State.
The petitioner’s case based on two grounds which were, first, that he was chargesheeted on wholly false premises of misconceived facts against him and, second, that on the ground of parity, he should be awarded bail on the fact that Anil Saxena, a co-accused, was granted bail. The respondents argued that the petitioner is trying to mislead the Court and that Anil Saxena was not holding an executive position but petitioner was and by virtue of his position, petitioner was responsible.
High Court rejected the plea to grant bail to the petitioner after rejecting the claims of the petitioner. The Court decided, relying on the judgement presented by the respondents, “It is settled law that economic offences are considered to be grave offences especially when public money is involved and that the Courts have to be careful in granting bail in such cases”. It found the investigation to be at a crucial stage and since, the petitioner was at a position where he could influence prosecution witnesses and tamper evidence, the Court rejected the first claim of the petitioner. On the issue of parity, the High Court decided not to intervene in that matter, as the granting of bail to co-accused Anil Saxena was challenged before the Supreme Court and has been disposed. It found that the grant of bail to co-accused cannot be granted to petitioner as precedent/parity to the bail does not apply to other accused. Therefore, the High Court, dismissed the petition. [Kavi Arora v. State, 2020 SCC OnLine Del 768 , decided on 23-07-2020]
