Prerna Gala
Published on: September 21, 2022 at 21:06 IST
Sanjeev Aggarwal, one of the defendants in the 2017 Chhattisgarh coal allocation scam case, had his bail revoked by a Special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Tuesday because he approached a witness. [AES Chhattisgarh Energy Pvt. Ltd. vs. CBI]
The accused broke the primary bail condition, which forbade him from approaching the prosecution witnesses in any way, according to Special Judge Arun Bhardwaj.
“Out of large number of cases, where the witnesses are threatened or won over, only a small number of such instances come to the notice of the court. Large number of prosecution fails due to hostile witnesses.”
“Once, a clear-cut instance of attempt to approach the witness comes to the notice of the court, the court should not shy away from taking the strong step of cancelling the bail of such an accused,” the judge said in his order.
The judge went on to say that just the very tip of the iceberg of these cases reaches the courts since witnesses rarely tell them about the accused’s attempts to approach them.
“No tolerance is feasible in these situations because they cut to the core of the delivery of criminal justice.”
“When deciding on such an application, the court must take into account not only the hardship that the accused will experience by losing his freedom, but also the hardship that society as a whole will experience if such incidents are ignored or are simply dismissed by issuing a warning or imposing a fine,” observed Judge Bharadwaj.
The court was considering a request from the CBI to revoke Aggarwal’s October 13, 2017, bail award. The CBI charged Aggarwal, the director of the company AES Chhattisgarh Energy, with violating Sections 420 (cheating) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) in the 2017 coal allocation fraud case.
The central agency emphasised that the accused had called a witness on July 31 of this year who worked for AES Chhattisgarh Energy.
The witness claims that the accused phoned him and initially kept his name a secret.
Later, Aggarwal exposed his identity and informed the witness that people from the company’s US division would like to speak with him about anything.
The court noted the occurrence and then requested Aggarwal’s response. He acknowledged approaching the witness and offered the court an “unconditional apology.”
The accused was represented by attorney Tanveer Ahmed Mir.
Senior Attorney RS Cheema served as a special public prosecutor for the CBI.