New Delhi: It is not uncommon for judges to cite unconnected cases in orders to establish a point of law.
In a bizarre instance, however, the Delhi High Court, while denying bail to former finance minister P. Chidambaram, has quoted facts from an unconnected case of money laundering, in which the orders were passed by the Supreme Court in 2017.
In the order against P. Chidambaram passed on 15 November, Justice Suresh Kumar Kait of the Delhi High Court stated that from 15 November 2016 to 19 November 2016, “huge cash to the tune of Rs 31.75 crore was deposited in eight bank accounts at the Kotak Mahindra Bank in the accounts of the ‘Group of Companies’.
Justice Kait has then elaborated by providing details of demand drafts issued during this period from the eight bank accounts, in the names of Sunil Kumar, Dinesh Kumar, Abhilasha Dubey, Madan Kumar, Madan Saini, Satya Narain Dagdi and Seema Bai.
The only hitch: None of this has anything to with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) case against P. Chidambaram. The former finance is essentially dealing with charges of irregularity involving the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) in the INX media case.
The details in Justice Kait’s order were verbatim copied from the Supreme Court order in the Rohit Tandon case of 2017.
Rohit Tandon was a lawyer and faced an ED case in which he was accused of laundering Rs 31.75 crore in a bid to escape the restrictions brought on by demonetisation.
In the Chidambaram case, the former finance minister has been accused of routing money allegedly earned through irregular FIPB clearances to various shell companies abroad, bank accounts and by also generating fake bank invoices.
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Not the first time
This isn’t the first time that facts have been mixed up in court in recent times.
The Supreme Court recently pulled up the ED in its case against former Karnataka minister D.K. Shivakumar, for copy-pasting arguments from the Chidambaram case without editing. The ED throughout its arguments had referred to Shivakumar as the former finance minister along with other crucial details connected to the Chidambaram case.
A bench headed by Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman said that “it was not the way to treat a citizen”.
It then dismissed the ED plea challenging the Delhi High Court order granting bail to the Karnataka Congress leader in an alleged money laundering case.
Also read: Chidambaram keeps the trend alive: Why all Indian politicians fall sick on landing in jail