Managing director of Malayalam news channel Reporter TV, Anto Augustine has moved a plea before the Kerala High Court seeking bail following his arrest on allegations of possessing liquor in excess of the legally permissible levels under the Kerala Abkari Act.

Augustine had been arrested in the case on Thursday morning. On Thursday night, he was remanded to 14 days if judicial custody. He later moved a bail before a trial court, which rejected the application earlier today.

Augustine has now moved the High Court for relief.

Augustine was arrested a day after a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Kerala Police searched his offices and residences.

The search was conducted as part of a probe into alleged financial fraud in connection with a failed football event with the Argentinian national team and footballer Lionel Messi. Augustine's Reporter Broadcasting Company was the main commercial sponsor of the event.

During a raid reportedly conducted at Augustine's family home in Wayanad, police uncovered roughly 67 litres of foreign liquor and wine, which exceeds the legally permissible limit for personal possession.

The Excise Department arrested Augustine in the early hours of Thursday.

Augustine has been booked under Sections 55(i), 55(a) and 58 of the Kerala Abkari Act, which penalise illegal import, export, transport, sale, and illicit possession of liquor or intoxicating drugs.

In his bail plea, Augustine has now argued that the property from which the liquor was seized was sold during a bank auction in 2022, and was no longer in his possession.

“The petitioner has therefore had neither title to nor possession of the building for more than four years before the date of the alleged detection,” the bail plea filed before the High Court states. 

The plea says that the trial court denied Augustine bail mainly on the premise that the property belonged to him, based on a building certificate issued by the local authority and by holding that a sale certificate in respect of the said property was not conclusive. Augustine has questioned this approach.

"A Building Certificate is a record maintained for the levy of property tax; it is neither a document of title nor evidence of possession, and it continues to reflect the name of the person originally assessed until the transferee applies for mutation," he argues.

The bail application also alleges flaws in the manner in which the search was conducted and in Augustine's arrest. The plea highlights that Augustine was absent when the liquor was seized.

“Conscious possession, which is the foundation of every offence alleged, is thus wholly absent,” he added. 

He has also alleged that no independent witnesses were summoned when the search was carried out, and that the witnesses present were chance witnesses. 

“Police and revenue officials were already inside when the detecting officer arrived and it was they who pointed out the alleged contraband, yet none of them signed the seizure mahazar. Section 103 of the BNSS was not complied with,” the plea says. 

Further, he has argued that his arrest in the case was flawed since the grounds of arrest were not conveyed to his family. 

“The grounds of arrest were intimated to an employee of the petitioner rather than to a relative, although the petitioner’s wife was available and her address was known to the very agency that had obtained a search warrant for the petitioner’s Ernakulam residence,” Augustine has stated.

He goes on to submit that he should not be denied bail on the ground of having criminal antecedents. 41 cases cited against him all arise out of the same incident, the bail application states.

"The petitioner is on bail in every one of them and has complied with every condition imposed; no application for cancellation has ever been moved," the bail plea further states.

He added that there was no need for custodial interrogation in this case, while urging the High Court to grant him bail.

"The case is entirely documentary, the articles stand seized, the samples stand produced, and no recovery is to be effected at his instance. Continued custody serves no investigative purpose," his plea states.

The bail application has been filed through advocate MP Shameem Ahamed.