Bombay High Court grants interim bail to Venugopal Dhoot in ICICI Bank-Videocon loan case

The Bombay High Court today granted interim bail to Videocon Group Chairman Venugopal Dhoot in the ICICI Bank - Videocon loan case [Venugopal Dhoot v. Central Bureau of Investigation & Anr.].The order was passed by a division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and PK Chavan.The Bench observed that the grounds for arrest were "casual and without any substance" and not as per mandate of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC)."It is not the case of the respondent No.1 that the petitioner was required to be arrested to prevent from committing any further offence or that he was causing the evidence of the offence to disappear or tampering with the evidence. The only contention is that his arrest was required for proper investigation and for confrontation. The grounds of arrest are, therefore, not as per the mandate of CrPC", the order stated. The bench directed that Dhoot be released subject to furnishing bail bond of ₹1 lakh..Dhoot is a co-accused in a case involving former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ICICI Bank Chanda Kochhar and her husband Deepak Kochhar.He was arrested on December 26 by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) citing reasons of non co-operation with the investigation. A special CBI court in Mumbai had remanded Kochhar and Dhoot to judicial custody on December 29, last year.Thereafter, Dhoot had approached the special court challenging his arrest.The special court rejected Dhoot's application on January 5, opining that it does not have the power to review its own order remanding Dhoot to custody. Aggrieved by the same, Dhoot has approached the High Court challenging his alleged “illegal arrest” by CBI and seeking urgent interim release on bail..Advocate Sandeep Ladda argued that Dhoot's arrest was arbitrary, illegal, and in gross violation of Sections 41 and 41A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). Ladda apprised the Court that Dhoot had been arrested in a connected money laundering case in which he had already been granted bail by the Special PMLA Court which had observed that he was co-operating in the case.He also argued that Dhoot had appeared before CBI on his own on December 26 (the day he was arrested) after he missed the summons issued for attendance on December 24 and 25, 2022.Ladda pointed out that Dhoot had been summoned by ED on the same dates which was the reason for his non-appearance on those dates.He had informed the CBI officers about the same.Despite that, Dhoot's non-appearance was considered as non-co-operation with the CBI and that was a reason for his arrest, Ladda stated..On the remand order, the High Court emphasised that the remanding Court had not recorded its satisfaction as to what persuaded it to authorize Dhoot's detention after going through the case diary of CBI..CBI counsel Senior Advocate Raja Thakare contended that Dhoot along with Kochhars had systematically tried to evade interrogation and it was because of this non co-operation that CBI was compelled to arrest them.The non co-operation by Dhoot had also been recorded in the arrest memo and remand order of the special CBI court, Thakare apprised the Court."It is a case of conspiracy. They decided what answers to give and the moment they were arrested they started the blame game and passing the buck began", Thakare submitted..Referring to the order passed by bench of Justice Dere releasing co-accused Kochhar, Thakare contended that the arrest after so many years was only because the agency required time to study the huge amount of transactions in the case.He also argued that that if Dhoot and Kochhars would have been arrested in 2019, the agency would have been constrained to file their chargesheet in a rushed manner without being able to properly study the transactions..The Court however was not satisfied with this submission. "There is no satisfactory answer from CBI as to why for a period of 3 years, it had neither confronted all the accused before one another or demonstrated the progress of the investigation by placing the case diary before the remanding Court. Non-compliance of Section 41 and 41A of the CrPC is, therefore, apparent", the Court concluded. .[Read order]