Supreme Court grants bail to Bikram Singh Majithia in assets case; AAP says ‘not an acquittal’

Majithia will certainly be convicted, he added.

The SAD, however, claimed that court order has “exposed” the “political vendetta” unleashed by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann against Majithia.

Senior Akali leaders Daljit Singh Cheema and Arshdeep Singh Kler claimed the AAP government did its utmost to “incarcerate” Majithia by “concocting a false disproportionate assets case”, which it failed to defend in the apex court.

In a statement, the Akali leaders said, “After the AAP government failed to present a chargesheet in the false narcotics case registered against the Akali leader, and after its special leave petition against the bail granted to Majithia in the case was dismissed by the Supreme Court, it decided to embroil the Akali leader in a false disproportionate assets case. This case will eventually meet the same end as the false narcotics case registered against Majithia”.

Daljit Cheema added that the AAP government proceeded against Majithia “in a desperate bid to silence him as he had consistently condemned the wrong policies of the government besides speaking up for the rights of the people”.

“Punjabis will give a befitting reply to the AAP government for misusing the police and investigating agencies to frame its opponents in politically-motivated cases,” he alleged.

The Punjab Vigilance Bureau arrested Majithia on June 25 last year in the disproportionate assets case allegedly involving the laundering of Rs 540 crore of “drug money”. On August 22, the Vigilance Bureau filed a chargesheet in a Mohali court, which ran into more than 40,000 pages.

In its FIR registered against Majithia, the Vigilance Bureau claimed that preliminary investigations revealed that more than Rs 540 crore of “drug money” had been laundered through several channels, allegedly facilitated by Majithia.

The FIR against Majithia stemmed from an ongoing investigation being conducted by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Punjab Police into a 2021 drug case. In 2021, Majithia was booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, based on a 2018 report of the anti-drug SIT. The Akali leader spent more than five months in a Patiala jail before walking out in August 2022 after the Punjab and Haryana High Court granted him bail.