The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted bail to Trinamool Congress leader Anubrata Mondal who was arrested by the CBI in a cattle-smuggling case.
Mondal, however, will have to remain in jail as the Enforcement Directorate, too, had registered a parallel case against him under the Prevention of Money Laundering
Act (PMLA).
The probe agencies had accused Mondal of being part of an organised racket that smuggled cattle to Bangladesh through Birbhum and Murshidabad districts.
A bench of Justices Bela M. Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma granted the relief after briefly hearing senior advocate and former attorney-general Mukul Rohatgi appearing for Mondal and additional solicitor S.V Raju for the CBI.
Raju opposed the bail arguing that Mondal was an influential person and could sway the trial and tamper with evidence.
However, Rohatgi said Mondal had been incarcerated since August 2022 and the trial was unlikely to conclude soon as a large number of witnesses were to be examined.
Rohatgi submitted that they were yet to receive the English version of the chargesheet and several documents that were in the Bengali language.
When the court pointed out that Mondal himself was a Bengali, Rohatgi said the chargesheet was spread over one lakh pages out of which 10,000 pages were in Bengali. He argued that the prosecution ought to have provided the accused with
the English version of the Bengali documents.
The senior advocate also told the court that Mondal was entitled to bail on a parity with the main accused who had already got the relief.
Noting that the trial is unlikely to take place soon, the bench granted bail to Mondal on the condition that he should surrender his passport and cooperate with the trial court proceedings and investigating agency.
However, Mondal will have to remain in jail on account of his earlier arrest by the ED in November 2022. He is currently lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail.
Mondal was arrested by the CBI in August 2022 and the ED in November 2022. Last year, a bench comprising Justice Trivedi had issued notices to the CBI on the status of the investigation.
