J&K High Court Grants Bail To Assistant Director In a Trap Case
Jammu, November 5: Justice Sanjay Dhar of J&K High Court Jammu Wing has granted bail to one Umesh Kumar Verma, posted as Assistant Director Civil Aviation at Jammu Airport, who was arrested by CBI in a trap case while allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs. 5,000/-.
Aseem Sawhney urged before the Court that CBI has framed the petitioner in a false case at the behest of the contractor, who had moved this complaint to CBI & further submitted that continuous arrest is not warranted any more as CBI does not require custody any longer and nothing is required to be recovered from petitioner.
Sawhney cited several Supreme Court judgment holding ‘bail not jail’ and submitted that entry to the airport was not under the petitioner’s control as alleged in FIR.
Advocate appeared for CBI opposed the bail citing the same as a serious offence and a white-collared crime.
After hearing both the parties, Justice Sanjay Dhar observed that “It is further contended that investigation of the case is complete and nothing is to be recovered from petitioner & recovery of the bribe amount has already been affected and it is not the case of the prosecution that any further recovery is to be effected from the petitioner, who is stated to be in custody since September 10, 2020. By now investigation of the case must have been taken to its logical conclusion.
Therefore, further custody of the petitioner is not going to serve any purpose. The reliance placed by the learned trial court upon the judgments of the Supreme Court in Amit Kumar’s and Y.S Jaganmohan Reddy cases while rejecting the bail application of the petitioner is misplaced inasmuch as the subject matter of these cases was swindling of crores. You cannot equate a case involving a graft of mere Rs 5,000 to the cases involving alleged fraud of hundreds of crores.
The law laid down by the Supreme Court in the said cases relied upon by the learned trial Court cannot be made applicable to a case of the present nature. The petitioner cannot be refused bail merely on the ground that he is involved in an economic offence. Doing so will amount to the imposition of pre-trial punishment upon him, which is impermissible in law.
The judge said that for the foregoing reasons, the petition is allowed and the petitioner is admitted to bail.
