In a setback for Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited's (DHFL) former promoters Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan, the Supreme Court on January 24 cancelled the bail for the duo in the alleged loan scam. The court directed that the Wadhawan brothers be taken into custody.
The top court set aside orders of the Delhi High Court and trial court that had granted bail to the Wadhawans. “There is no fundamental right to default bail,” the apex court noted, adding that the high court and the trial court committed an error in granting bail to them.
"We have no hesitation that the charge sheet having been filed and cognisance being taken in due time, respondents could not have claimed statutory bail as a right," the bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and S C Sharma said.
This development comes in the wake of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filing a chargesheet in its thorough investigation into the
alleged DHFL loan scam.
Under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), an accused becomes entitled to a grant of statutory bail if the probe agency fails to file the charge sheet on the conclusion of the investigation in a criminal case within 60 or 90 days period.
In this case, however, the CBI filed the charge sheet on the 88th day after registration of the FIR and the trial court granted default bail to the accused and the Delhi High Court upheld the order. The Wadhawan brothers were arrested in this case on July 19 last year. The high court, however, had clarified it did not go into the merits of the case.
The charge sheet was filed on October 15, 2022, and cognisance was taken. The FIR in the case was based on a complaint made by the Union Bank of India.
The probe against the Wadhawans pertains to "cheating" a consortium of 17 banks to the tune of ₹34,615 crore and the money laundering case stems from a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) FIR, the agency had then said in a statement.
With inputs from PTI
(Edited by : Amrita)
First Published: Jan 24, 2024 10:58 AM IST
