Giving a booster dose to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a city court on Friday granted bail to Delhi’s former health minister Satyendar Jain in the Rs 4.81 crore money laundering case,  after 18 months in jail. Jain is the fourth senior AAP leader to come out of prison in the last five months.

The party’s national convener Arvind Kejriwal, and senior Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh had secured bail in the last few months. The AAP leadership is expected to campaign extensively for the Delhi Assembly elections due early next year, to retain the AAP government. The turmoil within the party arising out of the ‘liquor gate’ scandal forced Kejriwal  to hand over the Chief Minister baton to Atishi. Jain and Sisodia were Ministers at the time of going to jail.  

Jain’s bail comes at a time when the entire AAP leadership is trying to regain the public perceptions about their politics ahead of the assembly polls in Maharashtra and Jharkhand after massive defeats in two states-Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir. After debacle in the Lok Sabha polls in May and assembly polls in Haryana, the AAP performance was pathetic and  all the candidates forfeited the deposit. 

Granting bail to Jain, Special Judge Vishal Gogne of Rouse Avenue Court said: “Considering the delay in trial and long incarceration of 18 months, and the fact that trial will take long to start, let alone conclude, the accused is favourably suited for the relief.” The judge granted the relief on a bail bond Rs 50,000 with two sureties of like amount.

The court also relied on the August 9 Supreme Court judgement that granted bail to former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia in cases linked to the alleged excise policy scam.

Jain was the first AAP leader and Health minister in the Kejriwal government till he was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on May 30, 2022, on the charge of laundering money through four companies allegedly linked to him. He was granted an interim bail a year later, in May 2023, by the Supreme Court on medical grounds. Jain returned behind the bars in March this year, after the Supreme Court turned down his request for a regular bail.

All senior AAP leaders who were jailed on corruption charges, are out on bail. Last month, Kejriwal was granted bail by the Supreme Court in a CBI case linked to the alleged liquor scam. Sisodia was granted bail by the top court in August this year, after spending 17 months in Tihar jail in cases related to the Delhi excise policy case.  In April this year, the SC had granted bail to AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh after ED didn’t oppose his plea in the Delhi excise policy case.

The moment the judge pronounced the order, Jain’s wife Poonam and daughter Shreya, who were present in the courtroom, broke down. Shreya spoke to media persons later and said Diwali had arrived early for the family.

The CBI had initially registered a case under Sections 13(2) (criminal misconduct by public servant) read with 13(e) (disproportionate assets) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 against Jain. The case was registered on the allegation that Jain had acquired movable properties in the name of various persons between 2015 and 2017 which he could not satisfactorily account for.

Later, the ED also registered a case and alleged several companies beneficially owned and controlled by him received accommodation entries amounting to Rs 4.81 crore from shell companies against cash transferred to Kolkata-based entry operators through a hawala route.

According to ED, Jain transferred money to Kolkata through the hawala channel and got it back from dummy companies in the form of accommodation entries, even though he could not show the source of the money received. He was earlier granted bail by the trial court in the case registered by CBI in September 2019. He was then granted interim bail by the SC on May 26 last year, which ended on March 18 this year, after the Supreme Court rejected his plea for regular bail.

In March, the Supreme Court had observed that Satyendar Jain, along with his aides Ankush Jain and Vaibhav Jain, were prima facie guilty of the alleged offences of money laundering.