The Supreme Court Wednesday declined to entertain former Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren’s petition seeking interim bail and pulled him up for “suppressing facts”, specifically that a special court has taken cognizance of the complaint against him.
Hearing the matter, a vacation bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma noted that the petitioner has not disclosed the fact that the trial court has taken cognisance of the charge sheet in the matter and warned it would dismiss the plea.
“We need certain clarifications first. You did not tell us you had (already) filed a bail petition. We expected some candour… your client should have told us. You can’t keep material facts from us,” the court said during the hearing.
Following this, Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who was representing Hemant Soren in the top court, withdrew the petition seeking interim bail.
He, however, told the court that it was his personal error and his client was not aware of this.
The development comes as a setback to Soren, who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in January this year in connection with a money laundering case related to an alleged land scam.
It also means Soren would not be able to campaign for the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) candidates in the Lok Sabha elections 2024.
Jharkhand has 14 Parliamentary constituencies. Polling for seven of them has already been completed while the remaining will go to polls in the final two phases on May 25 and June 1.