Chandigarh: Shiromani Akali Dal leader and former minister Bikram Singh Majithia did not get any immediate relief from the Supreme Court in the disproportionate assets case. The court granted the Punjab government two weeks to file its reply on his bail petition. The next hearing will take place on February 2, 2026.
The matter was heard by a bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta. During the proceedings, Majithia counsel Advocate Aggarwal requested the court to consider interim bail. He said he was not opposing the state request for time but urged the court to grant temporary relief, arguing that Majithia was not a flight risk.
The court raised questions over Majithia claim that his life is under threat inside jail. The bench asked how long he had been in custody, how many times his life had been threatened and whether he had been shifted to another jail. The judges also observed that if Majithia was seeking transfer to Chandigarh jail, there should be no difficulty in examining the request.
Senior advocate Siddharth Dave, appearing for the Punjab government, told the court that all necessary steps had already been taken to ensure the safety of the accused. He sought two weeks time to submit the state reply.
During the hearing, the court observed that five hundred forty crore rupees was public money. Majithia counsel responded that the present charge sheet refers to forty crore rupees. He also pointed out that the state had sought time earlier as well.
Majithia was arrested on June twenty five after early morning raids at his Amritsar residence and at twenty five other locations. Vigilance teams seized digital devices, property documents and financial records during the searches. On June twenty six, a court in Mohali sent him to seven days police remand, which was later extended by four more days. He was sent to judicial custody on July six and is currently lodged in Nabha jail, where he spent Raksha Bandhan, Dussehra and Diwali.
The Vigilance Bureau filed a detailed charge sheet on August twenty two, running into more than forty thousand pages and citing statements of over two hundred witnesses. The case is linked to a two thousand thirteen Enforcement Directorate probe that had exposed a synthetic drug racket involving about six thousand crore rupees.
Former DSP Jagdish Singh Bhola, identified as the kingpin of the racket, had named Majithia during questioning.
While courts later dropped the drug related allegations against Majithia, the present case focuses on corruption and money laundering.
The charge sheet refers to about seven hundred crore rupees worth of alleged illegal assets, identified after searches at fifteen locations across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Statements of several Akali Dal and BJP leaders have also been recorded in the case.
