Why are you shying away from filing bail plea? SC asks Sanjay Singh

New Delhi, Nov 20 (IANS) The Supreme Court on Monday questioned Aam Admi Party (AAP) leader Sanjay Singh as to why he has not yet filed a bail plea while hearing his petition challenging his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and subsequent remand in alleged Delhi Excise Policy scam.

The bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and S.N.V. Bhatti issued notices and sought a response of the Centre and ED on the plea filed by Singh challenging his arrest and remand by the probe agency in the money-laundering case.

The Centre and the ED have to file a response in the matter before December 11.

While hearing the petitions, the bench asked senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Singh, as to why he has not yet applied for regular bail plea yet.

"Why are you shying away from that? We will say notice but you file (regular bail plea)," Justice Khanna remarked.

The court gave liberty to Singh to file for a regular bail application before the concerned jurisdictional court.

On November 3, Singh who is also a Rajya Sabha MP, moved the apex court against the Delhi High Court order that upheld his arrest and remand by the ED in the liqour policy scam.

On October 20, the Delhi High Court had dismissed Singh’s plea while upholding his arrest and remand by the ED in the money laundering case registered by the agency in its ongoing probe into the alleged irregularities in the now-scrapped excise policy.

On October 13, Special Judge M.K. Nagpal of the Rouse Avenue Court had sent Singh to a 14-day judicial custody in the case.

Singh has challenged his arrest by and remand to the ED saying that the grounds of arrest were not given to him by the financial probe agency.

On October 10, the ED had sought his further custody from Judge Nagpal on the grounds that his behaviour was totally non-cooperative with regard to the source of acquisition of some confidential documents of the agency pertaining to this case.

The other grounds on which the ED sought Singh’s custody were that he refused to acknowledge or sign the Call Detail Record (CDR) of his mobile number in respect to the calls appearing between the said number and the number of co-accused, Amit Arora.

It was further submitted that the digital data of around 200 GB has been recovered during the course of the fresh search and the same is yet to be analysed and the task of confrontation of the accused with the said digital data is not completed.

The financial probe agency on October 4 arrested Singh after carrying out searches at his residence in the North Avenue area.