Supreme Court grills ED for opposing bail restoration after one year of stay

The Supreme Court on Thursday grilled the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on why it was opposing the lifting of a one-year-long stay on bail granted to an accused in a money laundering case [Parvinder Singh Khurana vs Directorate of Enforcement]..A Bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Augustine George Masih questioned if the Delhi High Court could have casually stayed the bail granted to the accused by way of a reasoned trial court order. "What is this happening? This is shocking. Please answer our question. Can bail be stayed as a matter of course? How can you appear to get stay on bail for one year? Unless he is a terrorist where is the reason to stay? Can you defend? We will set it aside ... How the High Court casually stayed the bail?! Could the High Court have stayed without reasoned order? Answer us ... What signals we are sending! We are blaming us also," Justice Oka remarked. .The Court added that it was concerned with the larger aspect of a person's right to liberty."Can High Court stay like this? See how it was done ... See we are worried about the liberty aspect. A person has to languish for one year in jail after bail was granted!" Justice Oka remarked..The top court was dealing with appeals against certain Delhi High Court orders in connection with a money laundering case involving one, Parvinder Singh Khurana.On June 17, 2023, a trial court in Delhi granted bail to Khurana. However, this bail order was stayed the same month by Justice Amit Mahajan of the Delhi High Court after the ED filed an appeal. On March 18, 2024, Justice Mahajan released the matter from his board.On May 22, 2024, the matter came up before Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma, who listed the matter for hearing on July 9..Khurana proceeded to move the Supreme Court for relief.On June 7, the top court expressed shock over the long pendency of the matter before the High Court, stayed the High Court's May 2022 order and restored the bail granted to Khurana. During today's hearing, the ED argued that bail had wrongly been granted by the trial court in the first place. The ED's counsel, Zoheb Hossain added that the ED was not responsible for the delays in the case before the High Court. He submitted that full-fledged arguments were completed at one stage, but the High Court judge was then made to recuse. "Blame is not on us. We are helpless. Prosecution is public time and money and judges recuse. Expressing my helplessness .. Cannot defend the interim order but main bail cancellation is pending," Hossain said.The Bench was initially inclined to close arguments in the case today and reserve its verdict. However, sometime after the matter was reserved for orders, Hossain again mentioned the case. He said that Additional Solicitor General SV Raju would want to be heard tomorrow. The Bench relented to the request and granted the agency ten minutes to make submissions tomorrow. "After order was reserved, learned counsel makes an extraordinary request to make more submissions. As a last indulgence, we grant 10 minutes, list tomorrow," the Court noted in its order. .Khurana's (accused) appeal was filed through advocate Madhusmita Bora, who appeared along with Senior Advocate Sudhanshu Shashikumar Choudhari and advocates Harsh Sethi, Anant Nigam, Dipankar Singh, Pawan Kishore Singh and Raghav Luthra.