SC cancels Hasan Ali's bail

NEW DELHI, 17 MARCH: Pulling up a Mumbai court, the Supreme Court today cancelled the bail granted to Mr Hasan Ali Khan in a money laundering case and granted the Enforcement Directorate (ED) a four-day custody of the businessman after observing it was “deeply disturbed” over the way the judge had conducted the proceedings.

The SC cited “extraordinary circumstances” of the case in staying the 11 March order of Mumbai principal sessions judge Mr ML Tahaliyani who granted bail to the 53-year-old Pune-based stud farm owner, denying the ED's plea for his custodial interrogation.

A Bench of Mr Justice B Sudershan Reddy and Mr Justice SS Nijjar said it was “deeply disturbed” at the manner in which the trial court judge had rejected the ED's contention and granted bail while giving a lengthy order for it.
The SC initially remanded Mr Khan in ED's custody for 72 hours but extended it to four days following a plea made by solicitor-general Mr Gopal Subramanium. “The way the proceedings were conducted, we are deeply disturbed,” the Bench observed, while staying the trial court's order. “Why has the learned judge written so much?” “The order passed by the learned judge has created an extraordinary situation which may ultimately frustrate the entire investigation. Having regard to the extraordinary situation, complexity of the issue and the magnitude of the case, we deem it fit to stay the order,” the Bench said.

The order was passed after the ED, stung by the Mumbai court's rejection of its plea for custodial interrogation of Mr Khan, moved the SC. Earlier, making a forceful plea on behalf of the ED, the solicitor-general submitted to the court that the trial court judge had exceeded his brief and passed an unusual order for granting bail to Mr Khan, despite neither the accused nor his counsel making any plea for it.
He pointed out that the judge had granted bail to Mr Khan while dealing with the ED's plea for his remand to conduct custodial interrogation. The solicitor-general claimed that the ED was in possession of incriminating evidence against Mr Khan which showed that he has stashed a staggering amount black money in a number of banks abroad. He alleged Mr Khan had withdrawn about US$ 60,000 from a Swiss bank and cited communications from Swiss official sources to substantiate the allegation.

Mr Tahaliyani had rejected ED's plea for custodial interrogation of Mr Khan on the ground that the agency could not prove any “scheduled offence” against him to justify its plea in this regard. He had also said some of the “confidential” evidence provided by the ED was available on “Wikipedia”, a free encylopedia.
Mr Khan is facing a Rs 70,000-crore tax demand notice from the income tax department besides the ED probe. The ED had arrested Mr Khan on 7 March after being pulled up by the Supreme Court for having failed to interrogate him in custody.

Seeing the corruption cases within the judiciary, one cannot help but wonder how much the learned judge Mr. ML Tahaliyani was paid by Khan to pass the order.
When the whole of India is crying hoarse against corruption, it required some courage of the part of the judge to grant him bail.
Must have been a big sum.