THE BOMBAY High Court recently granted bail to a businessman from Jharkhand, who was booked by the NIA in a fake currency conspiracy case in 2020, stating that merely the mobile number of the appellant being found in the device of the co-accused “will not enable it to draw any adverse inference”. Kishor Kumar Agarwal (55) has been lodged in Taloja jail in Navi Mumbai since September 2020. The court held that “merely because the mobile number of the appellant was found in the mobile handset of co-accused, that in itself, will not enable it to draw any adverse inference, particularly, in absence of any retrieval of chats having taken place, purportedly between them.” The HC directed Agarwal to be released on bail on furnishing personal bond of Rs 2 lakh with sureties and ordered the businessman to attend NIA's Mumbai office once every month till conclusion of the trial. It also asked him to surrender his passport in the trial court and inform the court as well as the probing agency about his latest place of residence and contact details after being released. The court also asked Agarwal to cooperate in the conduct of the trial. A single-judge bench of Justice Revati Mohite-Dere passed the order on June 8 in an appeal by Agarwal against the Special NIA court order rejecting his bail application. As per prosecution, the complaint was registered by Sahar Police Station in Mumbai on February 2, 2020 wherein 1,193 Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) in denomination of Rs 2,000 having total face value of Rs 23.86 lakh were recovered from arrested accused Javed Gulamnabi Shaikh. After the National Investigation Agency (NIA) took over the case, it was re-registered at NIA police station, Mumbai, and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), among others, were invoked against the accused persons. The prosecution alleged that Shaikh was smuggling FICN in collusion with a man called Surinder Kumar Bharose Lal and that the amount was to be handed over to Agarwal and another person. The NIA raided Agarwal's house in Jharkhand and seized a mobile phone and four SIM cards and claimed that during the probe, Agarwal disclosed that he had met the arrested accused in December, 2019. The central agency further said that Agarwal's contact number was saved in Shaikh's mobile phone and that the latter had disclosed that the appellant dealt in FICN. Senior advocate Mihir Desai and advocate Mihir Joshi for the appellant submitted that the special NIA court judge wrongly relied on NIA's submissions while rejecting Agarwal's bail plea. Desai argued that there is no satisfactory and convincing evidence produced by NIA to suggest that appellant had met Shaikh in connection with FICN. He added that the NIA could not prove that the alleged video of FICN found on Shaikh's mobile phone, which was allegedly sent by the appellant, was indeed a video of FICN. The lawyers said that the evidence failed to show appellant's complicity in alleged crime, adding that no FICN were seized from his possession and therefore, he deserved to be released on bail pending trial. After perusing the submissions, the bench observed: “It is quite disturbing that without analysing all the circumstances individually, which were pressed by the prosecution, the special NIA Court Judge held that those circumstances prima facie disclose that the appellant was having knowledge about the possession and circulation of FICN and he was also involved in the business of FICN.”
