The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has approached the Supreme Court against the Jharkhand High Court order granting bail to Chief Minister and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader Hemant Soren in the money laundering case against him.
Soren has been accused of illegally acquiring 8.5 acres of land in the Baragain Circle, Ranchi and of being involved in a scheme to launder the proceeds of the crime while projecting the property as “untainted”.
However, the High Court had granted him bail on June 28 after concluding that there was “reason to believe” that he was not guilty of the alleged offence of money laundering linked to the alleged land scam.
Single-judge Justice Rongon Mukhopadhyay of High Court ruled that the claim by ED that its timely action prevented Soren and others accused from illegally acquiring land, seemed vague since other witnesses alleged that land in question had already been acquired by Soren.
“The claim of the Enforcement Directorate that its timely action had prevented the illegal acquisition of the land by forging and manipulating the records seems to be an ambiguous statement when considered in the backdrop of the allegation that the land was already acquired and possessed by the petitioner as per some of the statements recorded u/s 50 PMLA, 2002 and that too from the year 2010 onwards,” the Court said.
Pertinently, the Court stated that none of the registers or revenue records bore any evidence of Soren’s direct involvement in the acquisition and possession of the said land.
Further, nobody who was aggrieved by such alleged acquisition had approached the police to register any complaint despite the fact that Soren was not in power in Jharkhand during the relevant period, the High Court noted.
“There was no reason for the purported oustees from the land in question not to have approached the authorities for redressal of their grievance if at all the petitioner had acquired and possessed the said land when the petitioner was not in power,” the Court said.
Hence, it concluded that the twin conditions for the grant of bail under Section 45 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) stood satisfied in the present case.
Soren had stepped down as Chief Minister of Jharkhand on January 31 following his arrest by the ED in a money laundering case related to the “illegal change of ownership of land by the mafia” in the State.
JMM leader Champai Soren had then served as Chief Minister while Hemant Soren was in jail.
