Tahir Hussain gets bail in money laundering case after 4 years of custody

Karkardooma Court has granted regular bail to Tahir Hussain in a Money laundering case linked to the North East Delhi riots of 2020. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested him on March 6, 2020. He has undergone half of the sentence in the money laundering case.

He will remain in custody in a larger conspiracy of the Delhi riots case. He is also accused of a larger conspiracy in the Delhi Riots case.

It is alleged that Tahir Hussain funded the anti-CAA NRC protest and communal riots.

Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Sameer Bajpai granted Tahir Hussain regular bail after considering the submissions by counsel for the accused and the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

He has been granted bail on the condition of furnishing a personal bond of Rs 50,000 and two surety bonds in the like amount.

While granting bail, the court observed that the accused has undergone one-half of the sentence in the money laundering case.

"Keeping in view the provision under section 436-A Cr.P.C., all the facts and circumstances as discussed above, the rulings as given by both the parties and specially the ruling as mentioned in the preceding para, the court concludes that as the applicant has undergone detention of more than one half of the period of imprisonment, as provided for the offence allegedly committed by him, he is entitled for bail," ASJ Bajpai said in the bail order of March 29.

The court has imposed some conditions including that the accused shall not leave the jurisdiction of Delhi NCR without prior permission of the court. He shall not involve himself in similar kind of offence and shall not contact and influence any witness.

Tahir Hussain moved a regular bail application through advocates Naveen Malhotra and Ritwik Malhotra.

They submitted that the final outcome in the present case will depend upon the result in the case pertaining to the predicate offence, where even the charges have not been framed.

The counsel further argued that after framing of charge in the case regarding predicate offences i.e. FIR no. 59/2020, the evidence will take many many years as there are hundreds of witnesses and only after the outcome of that case, the court can conclude the proceedings in the present case and as such there is no purpose to keep the applicant under detention, when he has undergone detention of half of the sentence as prescribed under the relevant provision and meet out the condition as given under the relevant provision.

On November 3, 2022, a charge was framed against the applicant for an offence punishable under section 4 of the PML Act. The maximum punishment is seven years in this section, and the accused has undergone more than four years of detention.

The bail application was opposed by ED's special public prosecutor (SPP), who submitted that the accused cannot benefit from the provision under Section 436-A of the Cr.P.C.

It was also contended that the proviso as given in the said section makes it clear that the court may order continued detention of the applicant for a longer period than one half of the period of sentence, and considering the gravity of the offence as committed by the applicant and multiple FIRs against him, the court should use the discretion against him.

The ED submitted that the investigation, which resulted in the said ECIR, has concluded that the applicant was involved in criminal conspiracy, cheating, and document falsification. At his direction, a huge amount of money was withdrawn from different companies and used in the riots.

The ED submitted that the proceeds of crime can be considered to be around Rs 5.24 crores and out of this amount, investigation in respect of Rs 1.5 crore has been completed, which corresponds to the amount as fraudulently removed by the applicant from the bank accounts of the companies owned or controlled by him from the period October, 2019 to January, 2020 and the cash was used in the anti CAA protests in North East Delhi and communal riots.