Bribes for visa | Court reserves order on Karti Chidambaram’s anticipatory bail plea

ED’s money laundering case was registered on the basis of CBI’s FIR in the bribes for visa case

A Special CBI court on Monday reserved its order for June 3 on an anticipatory bail application filed by Congress MP Karti Chidambaram in the Enforcement Directorate's money laundering case registered on the basis of the Central Bureau of Investigation's FIR in the bribes for visa case.

Meanwhile, Special Judge M.K. Nagpal also directed that the interim protection from arrest granted to Karti last week will continue till the orders are passed.

The Enforcement Directorate has opposed the plea, saying that the apprehension of arrest is not reasonable as the agency has only just registered the ECIR (Enforcement Case Information Report) and that they have barely begun the investigation. They added that the agency is yet to receive crucial documents of the case from the CBI.

However, Karti's lawyers argued that the ED's line of argument proved their point. They alleged that the ECIR in the matter was registered with "haste", "without there even being an allegation in the alleged schedule offence that the applicant [Karti] has received any illegal gratification/proceeds of crime".

Moreover, Karti's lawyers submitted that there is no risk of him fleeing the proceedings. They added that most of the evidence in the case is documentary in nature and is already either with the government or with the probe agencies, which rules out the possibility of tampering with evidence.

Significantly, in the CBI case, the court has accepted an undertaking from the agency that it will serve a written notice to Karti three working days in advance, in the event that it intends to arrest him in the case. Karti had last week joined the CBI probe after returning from London.

The CBI has alleged in its FIR against Karti that his chartered accountant S. Bhaskararaman had allegedly demanded and accepted a bribe in exchange for facilitating the approval of a request to reuse project visas in 2011.