The Supreme Court on Friday modified the Delhi High Court order and reduced the interim bail granted to Raghav Magunta Reddy – one of the accused in the Delhi excise policy scam – till June 12 instead of 15 days bail granted by the High court that was to end on June 22.
Reducing the interim bail granted to Raghav Magunta Reddy to six days, a vacation bench comprising Justice Aniruddha Bose and Justice Rajesh Bindal noted that his ailing maternal grandmother was admitted in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Apollo Hospital at Nellore, in Andhra Pradesh.
The top court vacation bench reduced the period of vacation bench to six days on a plea by the Directorate of Enforcement that too besides the central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is probing the money laundering aspect of the liquor scam in which Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi government, Manish Sisodia too is under judicial custody.
The court recorded the ED submission that after Raghav Magunta Reddy’s plea for regular bail was rejected by the special PMLA court, he sought interim bail on the grounds of his wife’s illness but he withdrew it. Then again, he sought interim bail to take care of his ailing grandmother and was granted 15 days bail by a vacation bench of Delhi High Court.
Additional Solicitor General (ASG) S.V. Raju appearing for ED told the court that there were other relatives in Raghav Magunta Reddy’s family to take care of the ailing lady. He said that this was a ploy on the part of Raghav Magunta Reddy to stay away from jail after his regular bail was rejected.
However, senior lawyer Amit Desai appearing for Raghav Magunta Reddy’ said that his grandmother was 83-year-old and his grandfather was 89-year-old and there was none in the family, at this stage, to take care of his ailing grandmother. Desai said that Raghav Magunta Reddy be allowed to continue on interim bail till June 22 and three-days have already gone by.
On 10 February, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Raghava in connection with the Delhi liquor scam.