New Delhi: Senior Congress leader and the former finance minister P. Chidambaram’s plea for bail in the INX Media case relating to alleged irregularities in the grant of Foreign Investment Promotion Board’s (FIPB) being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will be heard by the Supreme Court on Friday.
Mr Chidambram’s plea for bail is listed for hearing before a bench of Justice R. Banumathi and Justice Hrishikesh Roy.
Justice Banumathi along with Justice A. S. Bopanna had on September 5 had rejected Chidambaram’s plea for anticipatory bail in Enforcement Directo-rate’s case of alleged money laundering in INX Media case.
Mr Chidambaram has moved the top court challenging Delhi High Court’s order rejecting his plea for bail.
The Congress leader is facing allegations of committing irregularities in the grant of Foreign Investment Promotion Board’s (FIPB) clearance to INX Media for receiving '305 crore against the approved overseas investment of '4.62 crore.
Senior counsel Kapil Sibal in the morning mentioned Chidambaram’s plea for bail before a bench headed by Justice N.V. Ramana. Justice Ramana directed that the matter be placed before the CJI Gogoi.
Mr Chidambaram is in Tihar Jail under judicial custody since the rejection of his anticipatory bail by the top court on September 5, 2019. On that very day the Special CBI Court sent Chidambaram to 14 days judicial custody to Tihar Jail and the same has been extended since then. He is in judicial custody for nearly a month.
Rejecting the plea for anticipatory bail, a bench of Justice R. Banumathi and Justice A.S. Bopanna on September 5, 2019, had said that the power to grant anticipatory bail was an “extraordinary power” which has to be exercised “sparingly” and in “exceptional cases” more so in case of economic offences as they affect the “economic fabric of the society”.
The court had said that the grant of anticipatory bail to “some extent interferes in the sphere of investigation of an offence” and thus the court must be “circumspect” while granting anticipatory bail.
