The Jharkhand High Court on Friday granted bail to former Chief Minister Hemant Soren in the money laundering case filed against him in connection with an alleged land scam [Hemant Soren v. Directorate of Enforcement].
Justice Rongon Mukhopadhyay approved Soren’s bail application today. Previously, Justice Mukhopadhyay had denied Soren’s plea for interim bail to attend his uncle’s funeral rites, finding no exceptional circumstances to grant such a request. However, the judge has now allowed his regular bail application.
Soren stepped down as Chief Minister of Jharkhand on January 31 following his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money laundering case related to the “illegal change of ownership of land by the mafia” in the State. Soren has denied the allegations, claiming in a video released before his custody that he was being arrested based on “fake papers” as part of a conspiracy.
A plea challenging his arrest by the ED was dismissed by a Division Bench of the High Court on May 3, after the Supreme Court directed him to approach the Jharkhand High Court first.
Regarding his bail application, the High Court opined today that there is reason to believe Soren is not guilty of the alleged offence and is unlikely to commit such an offence while out on bail. The single judge concluded that the twin tests for bail in a money laundering case under Section 45 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) have been satisfied.
“There is ‘reason to believe’ that the petitioner is not guilty of the offence … on an overall conspectus of the case there is no likelihood of the petitioner committing a similar nature of offence,” the Court’s order stated.
Senior Advocates Kapil Sibal, Meenakshi Arora, Anurabh Chodhary, and Advocates Aprajita Jomowal, Abhir Datt, Piyush Chitresh, and Shray Mishra represented Hemant Soren. Additional Solicitor General of India, SV Raju led arguments for the ED, along with Advocates Zoheb Hossain, Amit Kumar Das, Saurav Kumar, Rishabh Dubey, Shivan U Sahay, and Sankalp Goswami.
