Suspended IAS officer Vinay Kumar Choubey was granted bail on Tuesday by a court in Ranchi in connection with a liquor scam case, after the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) failed to file the charge sheet within the stipulated time.
Choubey, however, will not be released from jail immediately as he is also facing charges in a separate land-related case in Hazaribagh.
“The court was told that 92 days have passed in this case on Tuesday, but the ACB has not filed the charge sheet. The Supreme Court has directed in many cases that if the charge sheet is not filed within the stipulated time, then the applicant becomes entitled to default bail,” Choubey’s lawyer Devesh Ajmani was quoted by a news agency as saying.
Choubey, who was arrested by the ACB on May 20, is currently undergoing treatment at RIMS. The ACB court granted him default bail under Section 187(2) of the BNSS.
According to his lawyer, the court directed Choubey to submit two personal bonds of Rs 25,000 each, not leave the state without permission, and not change his mobile number.
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Choubey had challenged his arrest, arguing that the FIR against him was not maintainable and should be dismissed.
Allegations and Political Reactions
The Jharkhand government suspended Choubey after alleging that he caused a Rs 38-crore loss to the state exchequer by “indulging in fraud, conniving with criminals and misusing his post.” The government further claimed he engaged in corrupt practices and violated norms in selecting agencies to operate liquor shops and manage sales.
Meanwhile, BJP state president and Leader of Opposition Babulal Marandi accused the state government of mishandling the case. “The ACB deliberately did not file a charge sheet within 90 days… which made the way for his bail easy. In fact, the Hemant Soren government had hatched a dramatic conspiracy to arrest its own former secretary so that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) investigation could be affected and evidence could be destroyed,” Marandi told reporters.
He further demanded strict legal action, saying the ED should proceed against “these corrupt people involved in the loot of thousands of crores of public money.”
Earlier, the ED had raided premises linked to Choubey and others in October last year as part of its probe into the excise scam.
