A lockdown court on Friday rejected the temporary bail plea on medical grounds of Rakesh Kumar Wadhawan, founder and Chairman of Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited (HDIL) and a key accused in the Rs. 4,355 crore Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) bank scam case.
Rejecting his bail plea, Additional Sessions Judge UM Padwad said that no urgency is made out and while apprehension is made that Wadhawan is at high-risk of pulmonary and infectious diseases, it is done without any material in support. “The apprehension expressed sans any material in support cannot be said to be sufficient to show that the applicant is unsafe in jail,” the court said.
Wadhawan’s advocates had relied on a medical report of the Chief Medical Officer of Mumbai Central Prison. The report had stated that he was at high-risk for cardiac, pulmonary and infectious diseases as he was a patient of diabetes, hypertension and other ailments.
Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh, Special Public Prosecutor Sunil Gonsalves and Adv Aditya Thakkar appearing for the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the prosecuting agency, opposed the interim bail. They had argued that while Wadhawan had to be admitted due to a medical emergency to state-run JJ hospital in February end, he had recovered and was discharged. Further, that since the discharge, till date, he had not required any urgent medical attention.
The court also observed while rejecting the application, that the medical report of the prison officer had not cited any medical condition of Wadhawan that cannot be taken care of in custody and that the bail plea on merit is still pending before court.
Wadhawan is a key accused in the ED case wherein HDIL had taken loans from PMC bank from 2008 to 2019 without repaying previous loans. The bank’s huge exposure to HDIL constituted 73 per cent of its bad loans.
