RK Agrawal, one of the prime accused in the alleged Rajya Sabha horse trading case of 2012, was granted bail after he surrendered before a Ranchi Court on Tuesday. R K Agarwal, who was being backed by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) in the 2012 Rajya Sabha polls, is a businessman from Chhattisgarh.
“As Agrawal is being called by the CBI for inquiries time and again, we had an apprehension that he could be arrested and applied for Anticipatory Bail before the CBI court which was rejected on April 5 with an instruction to go for regular bail to a lower court. On Tuesday, he surrendered before the court of Judicial Magistrate
which, granted bail to him,” said Agrawal’s advocate Vikrant Sinha.
“The sections under which Agrawal was charged were all bailable. Moreover, the CBI has no evidence against him hence we did not had to face much problems in getting bail by the Court,” said his advocate.
Agrawal expressing confidence over Judiciary, also promised to appear before the CBI and the court as when required by them. He also denied of having any link with the money found from the said vehicle on March 30, 2012.
Although, Agrawal’s bail petition was opposed by the three CBI counsels- SK Yadav, BMP Singh and Sushil Kumar, he succeeded in securing bail from the court.
“As the investigation is still on, and more than Rs 2 crore have been recovered from his vehicle and the CBI is trying to impose PC act against him, the accused may not be granted bail,” countered CBI APP Sushil Kumar Singh.
The Election Commission late on March 30 had countermanded the poll held for two Rajya Sabha seats of Jharkhand in view of incidents of “horse trading and use of money power to influence the voters”.
The Commission after satisfied with the facts that the election process for Rajya Sabha election from Jharkhand had been seriously vitiated and could not be permitted
to proceed.
The EC action came in the wake of cash seizure of `2.15 crore from a vehicle belonging to the brother of one of the independent candidates R K Agarwal on the outskirts of Ranchi early in the morning ahead of the RS polls of 2012.