Allahabad High Court slaps Rs. 50,000 costs on Amrapali Director for Bench hunting, misusing process of court

The Allahabad High Court recently imposed costs of Rs. 50,000 on Amprapali Group's Director, Ajay Kumar for his attempts to subvert and misuse the process of the Court instead of surrendering before the Court as ordered earlier. .The Court proceeded to reject a modification application filed by Ajay Kumar in respect of the interim bail earlier granted to him on ground that it was non-maintainable. .Since he tried to interfere with the course of justice, the High Court imposed a cost of Rs.50,000/-on Kumar, which is to be deposited with the Oudh Bar Association within a period of two weeks..Whole effort of the accused-applicant has been to avoid a particular Bench ... by clever drafting of the application...Allahabad High Court.The applicant (Kumar) is involved in the Rs 6,000 crores infamous Amrapali mega scam. A case under Section 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002 was pending against him and others co-accused in the Court of Special Judge/ Session Judge Lucknow..Before Justice Dinesh Kumar Singh was a modification application filed by Kumar which sought to modify the order dated September 18, 2020 by way of which the High Court had granted his release on interim bail for a period of 2 months on medical grounds. .As per another order passed in the matter on December 3, Kumar was expected to surrender immediately before the trial court after the 2 month/ 60 day period was over i.e. on or before December 31, 2020. .In moving the instant modification application, the High Court opined that the whole effort of the accused-applicant was to avoid a particular Bench and get the matter listed before the Bench which passed the order in September, by cleverly drafting the application without annexing the final order dated December 3, 2020.."Order dated 03.12.2020 has not been annexed. However, order dated 18.09.2020 is annexed with the application. This was deliberately done to avoid the listing of the bail application before the Bench which has passed the final order dated 03.12.2020." said the Bench.."First time when the matter got listed before this Bench on 12.01.2021, an effort was made to get the matter delisted and an office report was engineered from a dealing clerk to the effect that the matter was wrongly listed before this Bench", added the High Court..With these observations, the Court found the application to be non-maintainable and was thus rejected the same with costs..Read the Order here: