Satyendar Jain returns to Tihar jail after 9 months as SC rejects regular bail plea

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by former Delhi minister and AAP leader Satyendar Kumar Jain against the dismissal of his regular bail plea. The court ordered him to surrender forthwith after cancelling his medical bail, holding that there was prima facie sufficient materials to suggest that he was guilty of offences in a money laundering case.

Subsequently, the former minister returned to the Tihar jail—"Jain arrived at Tihar jail in the evening. He was taken to jail number 7 after the formalities of lodging him in the prison were completed," a jail official told news agency PTI.

A bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Pankaj Mithal also rejected the bail pleas by co-accused Ankush Jain and Vaibhav Jain in the case.

"It is not possible to hold that appellants had complied with the twin mandatory conditions laid down in Section 45 of PMLA," the bench said.

The twin conditions are that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accused is not guilty of the offence of money laundering and that the accused is not likely to commit any offence while on bail.

The court upheld the Delhi High Court's judgment of April 6, 2022, which "after discussing the material on record had prima facie found the appellants guilty of the alleged offences under the PMLA, which judgment does not suffer from any illegality or infirmity."

In May 2022, the ED had arrested the AAP leader on the charge of laundering money through companies allegedly linked to him. In May 2023 the apex court granted interim bail to Jain for six weeks for spinal surgery. The apex court had since then extended the interim bail for several times.

In its judgment, the bench said there remains no shadow of doubt that the appellant, Jain, had conceptualised the idea of accommodation entries against cash and was responsible for the accommodation entries totalling to Rs 4.81 crores received through the Kolkata-based entry operators in the bank accounts of four companies—M/s Akinchan Developers Pvt Ltd, M/s Paryas Infosolution Pvt Ltd, M/s Indo Metalimpex Pvt Ltd and M/s Mangalayatan Projects Pvt Ltd—by paying cash and the said the companies were controlled and owned by Jain and his family.

"Though it is true that a company is a separate legal entity from its shareholders and directors, the lifting of corporate veil is permissible when such corporate structures have been used for committing fraud or economic offences or have been used as a facade or a sham for carrying out illegal activities," the bench said.

The court noted that the shareholding patterns of the said four companies are quite intricate, they do show that Jain through his family was controlling the said companies directly or indirectly and that he was the “beneficial owner” within the definition of Section 2(1) (fa) of PMLA.

The court said, having regard to the totality of the facts and circumstances of the case, it was of the opinion that the appellants miserably failed to satisfy the conditions to establish reasonable grounds for believing that they were not guilty of the alleged offences.

"On the contrary, there is sufficient material collected by the respondent-ED to show that they are prima facie guilty of the alleged offences," the bench said.

(With PTI inputs)