MUMBAI: Former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh on Wednesday approached the Mumbai special court for default bail, claiming that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) charge sheet filed against him was incomplete and that he was entitled to default bail under a provision that required the federal agency to file charges within 60 days of his arrest.
Deshmukh, who has been in jail since November 2, was arrested by CBI in the bribery case on April 6.
“An incomplete charge sheet is filed by the Investigating agency against the Applicant (Anil Deshmukh) and hence the Applicant is entitled to invoke the remedy of statutory bail as contemplated under the provisions of section 167 (2) of the CrPC (Criminal Procedure Code),” said the application filed by the 72-year-old Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader.
Section 173(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code requires a police officer to file the charge sheet against the accused as soon as the investigation is complete. Section 167 (2) allows the accused to seek bail if the charge sheet is not filed within the stipulated period of 90 days for offences punishable with a minimum sentence of 10 years. For all other offences, the accused is entitled to default bail if the charge sheet is not filed within 60 days.
In Deshmukh’s case, CBI filed the charge sheet on June 2 – well before the 60-day period ended.
But the former minister has argued that the charge sheet filed by CBI against him was filed without completing the investigation, and was only designed to ensure that he could not get default bail.
“The investigation is said to be completed if sufficient material is collected by the Investigating Officer based on which cognizance can be taken under Section 167 of the CrPC,” his plea said.
“An incomplete charge sheet filed without completing the investigation cannot be used to defeat the right of statutory bail under Section 167(2) of the CrPC,” the petition said.
Relying on media reports, Deshmukh claimed that CBI filed a 59-page charge sheet without completing the entire investigation and without filing a final and full-fledged charge sheet as understood under Section 173 CrPC.
“The prosecuting agency cannot subjugate the indefeasible statutory right of the Applicant to claim default bail.”
Deshmukh was first arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on November 2, 2021, on the allegations of money laundering. ED’s case against the NCP leader is based on the FIR registered by the CBI on April 21, 2021, after former Mumbai police commissioner, Param Bir Singh levelled corruption charges in his letter to chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.
In his March 20 letter last year, Param Bir Singh alleged that Deshmukh instructed certain Mumbai police officers, including assistant inspector Sachin Vaze, to collect an amount of ₹100 crore every month from Mumbai’s restaurants and bars.
ED claimed that Vaze called a meeting of bar owners and between December 2020 and February 2021, collected ₹4.7 crore from the owners of orchestra bars in Mumbai and handed over the “extorted money” in two instalments to Deshmukh’s personal assistant Kundan Shinde.
