Jailed former Finance and Home Minister P Chidambaram on Monday moved a bail application in the Supreme Court. The matter was mentioned before a bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) SA Bobde where senior advocate Kapil Sibal sought urgent listing of the plea. Sibal told the bench that Chidambaram has been in jail for around 90 days.
"We will see," the bench told Sibal, adding that the bail plea would come up for hearing either on Tuesday or Wednesday. Meanwhile in the afternoon the Delhi High Court clarified that the facts of another case mentioned in the order denying bail to Chidambaram are only for reference. Justice Suresh Kait said it was nowhere mentioned in the November 15 order that the observations made in a particular paragraph are of Chidambaram’s case. The court’s clarification came while taking up the matter suo motu (on its own) following news articles that there is ‘cut and paste’ work in the judgement. The High Court Ordered Chief Editors of ‘Indian Express’ and ‘The Hindu’ to publish clarification on Tuesday itself.
Earlier, the Enforcement Directorate approached the Delhi High Court seeking rectification of an "inadvertent" error in the order denying bail to Chidambaram in the INX Media money laundering case.
As per ED’s application, Justice Kait had referred to four paragraphs from a 2017 Supreme Court order rejecting bail to Delhi-based lawyer Rohit Tandon in a money laundering case in his November 15 verdict.