DAYS AFTER a court accepted the closure report filed in the Topsgrup case, the special court rejected a plea for interim release of a linked case filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). Special Judge M G Deshpande rejected the pleas of Amit Chandole, an alleged aide of Shiv Sena MLA Pratap Sarnaik and M Sasidharan, the former managing director of private security firm, Topsgrup Services and Solutions Limited. The two were arrested by the ED in December 2020. On September 14, an additional chief metropolitan magistrate's court had accepted the closure report filed by the Mumbai Police's Economic Offences Wing to close the case. Based on this, the lawyers for the two accused had filed a discharge application last week and also sought interim bail stating that since the main offence by the EOW has closed, the ED case cannot continue as per a recent Supreme Court order. The ED had opposed the pleas, stating that the closure report order has not attained finality. The court said that since there is still stipulated time for an appeal to be filed against the closure report being accepted by the magistrate's court, it cannot be said that the order is final. Lawyers for the accused, Kushal Mor, Priyanka Dubey and Megha Gupta, said there are 90 more days for the appeal period to be over. “The court can decide on the discharge application when the order becomes final. Since the ED case cannot continue in absence of the scheduled offence, till the two can be released on interim bail. The closure report was filed by the EOW in January. For nine months, no person filed any plea opposing it,” the lawyers submitted. It was also said that as per a Bombay High Court order, the ED does not have the locus standi to file an appeal in a case where the investigating agency is different. It was also submitted that the complainant in the case has said in an affidavit that the complaint resulted out of a 'misunderstanding' and that he will not be filing an appeal. The lawyers said that there is no party which will therefore file an appeal. The court, however, said that it cannot preempt who and whether anyone will file an appeal but it has to wait for the order to attain finality. If no appeal is filed, the court can discharge the accused from the ED case. The case pertains to alleged kickbacks received from Topsgrup for alleged facilitation of a contract of Rs 175 crore with Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority.
