Hemant Soren withdraws Interim bail plea
Ex-Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, who was detained in January in a money laundering case, has withdrawn his interim bail plea filed with the Supreme Court due to concerns about non-disclosure of facts, notably that a Ranchi special court had taken cognisance of the complaint against him.
Senior counsel Kapil Sibal, representing Soren, abandoned the application after an enraged court threatened to dismiss the plea. This means the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader, who is a member of the Congress-led INDIA alliance, would be unable to campaign for the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
A vacation bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma summoned Soren’s lawyers, claiming that they had hidden facts and had not reached the court with “clean hands”.
The bench declined to hear Soren’s plea because he had filed two distinct petitions—one disputing his arrest and the other seeking bail—without disclosing that the trial court had already taken cognisance of the accusations against him.
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“You pursue parallel remedies. You are suppressing the facts,” Justice Datta observed.
The bench responded to senior lawyer Kapil Sibal’s arguments on behalf of Soren, saying, “This is not the way you come before this court without giving key facts… Your conduct is not flawless. We expected your client to be candid, but you concealed important facts.
Last month, the Jharkhand High Court dismissed Soren’s petition challenging his arrest, citing a “abundance of documents that lay foundation for the arrest and remand of petitioner”.
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This came after the Supreme Court issued a notice to the central agency, requesting a response to an interim bail application filed before it on the grounds that the High Court was delaying delivery of its judgment.
ED case against Soren
The investigation against Hemant Soren pertains to a 8.86-acre tract of land in Ranchi that the ED claims he fraudulently acquired. The ED has claimed that Soren produced “huge amounts of proceeds of crime” by manipulating official records by posing as dummy sellers and purchasers under the pretense of forged/bogus documents in order to obtain large pieces of land worth crores of rupees.
According to the ED’s affidavit, Soren is actively attempting to “subvert” the investigation into the money laundering case against him by “misusing state machinery”. It has rejected his “special prayer” for interim bail to campaign in the Lok Sabha elections.
