The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has rejected the demand for extension of interim bail to Ajay Kumar, a director of Amrapali Group, who is being detained in Mandoli District Prison, Delhi, for filing an application hiding the facts and attempting bench hunting.
A single bench of Justice Dinesh Kumar Singh passed this order while hearing a bail application, filed by Ajay Kumar, Director of Amrapali Group. The Court noted that Amrapali Group’s Director Ajay Kumar tried to avoid a particular Bench and get his matter listed before another Bench and imposed a cost of Rs 50,000 to be deposited by him with Oudh Bar Association within two weeks.
The application has been filed seeking modification of the order dated September 18, 2020 in which the Court granted interim bail to the accused-applicant for a period of two months on medical grounds.
The accused-applicant has been involved in Rs 6,000-crore Amrapali mega scam and charged under Sections 3/4 of Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.
The accused procured a medical report from the District Jail Hospital Mandoli, Delhi where he is lodged in relation to several criminal offences allegedly committed by him along with other co-accused.
It appears that the jail administration, particularly doctor of jail and superintendent of District Jail, Mandoli are very liberal in giving medical certificates to the accused of Amrapali scam. Same doctor of the Mandoli jail had given report to the accused similar to one given to Anil Sharma, managing director of Amrapali Group of Companies.
On the basis of the report, Anil Sharma was granted interim bail by this Court for six weeks and a direction was given to the Director, AIIMS to constitute a team of doctors to examine him in view of the report issued by Medical Superintendent of Mandoli Jail and provide treatment accordingly.
He was granted interim bail with a condition that he would surrender immediately on expiry of 60 days from the date of his release from the jail and file an affidavit to that effect before this Court.
Now, this bail application was finally disposed of by the Court on December 3, 2020 taking note of the undertaking given at the bar by the counsel representing him.
As stated, the order dated September 18, 2020 got merged with the final order of the High Court dated December 3, 2020 and as per the undertaking of the accused-applicant, he should have surrendered before the trial Court concerned on or before December 31, 2020.
However, he did not surrender on or before December 31, 2020 and instead he filed the instant application to modify interim order dated September 18, 2020 without annexing the final order dated December 3, 2020 whereby the application stood finally disposed of.
“This was deliberately done to avoid the listing of the bail application before the Bench which has passed the final order dated December 3, 2020. As per design, in fact, the matter got listed before the Bench which passed order dated September 18, 2020 granting interim bail to the accused-applicant for two months on medical grounds,” the Court said.
The Court further observed, “Once Bail Application got finally disposed of on the undertaking of the accused that he would surrender on or before 31st December 2020, the life of the said application came to an end and, it could not be survived by moving an application in the disposed of matter.”