Bribery Case: Bail for 2 ‘conduits’ as CBI fails to file chargesheet

Singh was shunted out of Gujarat after the CBI registered an FIR against him on the basis of a written complaint by ED director Karnail Singh.

The CBI has alleged that the two accused “demanded and accepted huge bribes” from several accused on behalf of Singh when he was investigating the IPL cricket betting and the Surat hawala racket cases. Another alleged bookie Jayesh Thakkar is likely to move bail plea on the same ground on Tuesday.

Advocate R G Ahuja, who represented Arora and Jalan, said special judge S J Raje granted bail to the two after the CBI failed to file chargesheet on time.

Granting them bail, the court put several conditions on the two “bookies”, surrendering their passports.

In September, the same court had rejected their bail applications on the ground that chargesheet had not been filed and the investigation yet to be concluded. The CBI has claimed the three accused met several times in Delhi in 2015 and with the help of another bookies, Arora “contacted various bookies/punters whose name (sic) were already figured in the case investigated by ED under PMLA in IPL matter to collect money for protecting them from ED through JP Singh. The aforesaid conduits have collected bribe from Manoj Jain and Surendra Mandi of Delhi.”

According to the CBI documents submitted in the special court, Surendra and Manoj gave over Rs 3 crore to the two as “bribe” to evade arrests by the Ahmedabad ED, led by Singh .