New Delhi
Faced with the threat of dismissal of his plea, former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Wednesday was forced to withdraw from the Supreme Court his petition seeking an interim bail like Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for campaigning in the ongoing parliamentary elections and challenging the verdict of the Jharkhand High Court.
The Jharkhand High Court had in April dismissed Hemant’s plea challenging his arrest by the ED citing an “abundance of documents that lay foundation for the arrest and remand of petitioner”.
The High Court order came after the Supreme Court issued a notice to the ED and sought its response to an interim bail plea filed by Hemant on grounds that the High Court was delaying delivery of its judgement.
After the High Court delivered its judgement, the Supreme Court closed the petition saying it had now become “infructuous”. The Enforcement Directorate had arrested Hemant on January 31 in a money laundering case allegedly linked to a land scam.
Hemant cited the instance of grant of interim bail to Kejriwal and sought from the Supreme Court a similar relief to campaign for his party JMM and the INDIA bloc. Sibal had then requested that the bail plea and the petition challenging the High Court verdict be heard together.
“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. Your conduct leaves a lot from you,” a vacation bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma told Sibal, who admitted the error was his “personal responsibility and not my client’s” even as he sought to stress that he was not misleading the court.
But the court shot back asking: “Why is it that none of the petitions mention cognisance (by the special court) has been taken? You take your chances elsewhere.”
“You were pursuing parallel remedies. You applied for bail before special court, then came before us (also) praying for bail. On May 10, your other petition (seeking direction to the High Court to speed up its judgement) was dismissed. We were told judgment was delivered (but) it was not brought to our notice. Then also that cognisance (by the special court) had been taken,” the Supreme Court recounted.
Sibal sought to take the onus upon himself saying, “The fault is mine. Our intention was never to mislead the court.” He said he had acted independently since Hemant “is not in touch with us”. To this the court retorted, “He may be in custody, but he is not a layman”
The bench allowed Sibal to withdraw his plea after warning that if the court goes into the details of the case it will be “damaging” for the former Chief Minister.
