The Supreme Court has refused to grant anticipatory bail to Ramesh Sanka, former chief executive of IREO Residences Co Pvt Ltd, in a cheating case registered under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The Bench of Justice Ajay Rastogi and Justice Bela M. Trivedi on March 17 dismissed the anticipatory bail application of Sanka on the grounds that it did not find any reason to interfere with the order passed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
However, the Bench noted that if the petitioner surrendered within two weeks and applied for regular bail, the same may be considered expeditiously on its own merits in accordance with law.
Senior Advocates Jayant Bhushan and Tatini Basu, along with Advocate-on-Record (AOR) Kumar Shashank and Advocates Tushar Bhusan and Amartya Bhusan, appeared for the petitioner.
The respondents were represented by Senior Advocate Siddharth Luthra, along with Advocates Nishit Agrawal, Arshdeep Khurana, Annirudh Sharma, Kanishka Mittal, Anasuya Choudhury, Tannavi Sharma and Rudraditya Khare.
Earlier on March 6, Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) at Gurugram court, Manoj Kumar Rana,
had summoned Sanka to appear before the court in the PMLA case.
The court further sent co-accused in the case, Vivek Sehgal, to judicial custody till April 21.
The ACJM noted that in view of the contents mentioned in the application and the report on non-bailable warrants of the accused, he was satisfied that the presence of Ramesh Sanka could not be secured through the issuance of non-bailable warrants.
The court then summoned the accused to remain present before it on April 21, after noting that the warrant of arrest issued against Sanka was returned unexecuted.
Earlier on February 24, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had refused to grant anticipatory bail to Sanka in a case related to stealing of documents and criminal breach of trust.
The Single-Judge Bench of Justice Sandeep Moudgil had denied anticipatory bail to Sanka and another accused in the case, Sumit Kumar, on the grounds of ‘grave and serious’ nature of allegations, including cheating and extorting money in conspiracy with each other.
(Case title: Ramesh Sanka vs The State of Haryana)