The Rouse Avenue Court has granted interim bail to two former officials of the Excise Department, Kuldeep Singh and Narender Singh. Gautam Mootha, Arun Pillai and businessman Sameer Mahendru were granted bail as well. The court had also earlier granted bail to Vijay Nair and Abhishek Boinpally. The bail was granted at Rs. 50,000 personal bail bond.
Along with this the court also sought a response from the CBI concerning their regular bail plea and fixed the date as January 24, 2023, for the same. CBI meanwhile has filed a petition challenging the decision to grant bail to Vijay Nair and Abhishek Boinpally. The Petition argued that the trial court Judge had not only granted a concession of bail to the respondent accused in an extremely serious and wide-ranging economic offence, but that the discretion had been exercised at a very crucial stage of the investigation.
It is also submitted that the case was one of conspiracy and was sought to be carried out in an extremely convoluted manner with a clear purpose, that the investigation if any, did not reach the real culprits.