Four years after he was arrested by the Delhi Police in connection with the cricket spot fixing scandal with Rs 5.5 lakh in cash, the now-acquitted man finds himself in a peculiar spot. What to do with the demonetised currency returned by the police to him in February this yearIJ
The man in question, Abhishek Shukla, approached the Supreme Court on Friday praying for a directive to the Reserve Bank of India to allow him deposit the demonetised currency.
The Bench of Chief Justice JS Khehar, Justices DY Chandrachud and Sanjay Kishan Kaul first sought proof to justify his story. The petitioner’s lawyer Manjeet Singh Ahluwalia produced the seizure memo issued by the Delhi Police dated September 25, 2013.
Ahluwalia submitted that his client was joined as a co-accused by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police in FIR no. 20/2013 lodged at PS Special Cell in Delhi.
The FIR was in connection with the Indian Premier league (IPl) spot fixing scandal. Shukla was accused of being an associate of cricketer S Sreesanth. The allegation was that Shukla entered the hotel room of Sreesanth and removed the ill-gotten money of Rs 5.5 lakh.
The trial court on July 25, 2015 discharged him of all charges, but the money that the police seized from him on September 25, 2013 was still lying in the malkhana of the investigating agency. The Investigating Officer in the case directed release of the seized money to Shukla on February 1, 2017.
The court has already reserved orders on a bunch of similar petitions where individual citizens and firms have sought exemption to deposit demonetised currency with the RBI. The Bench found this also to be a fit case to issue notice to the Centre and the RBI Governor.
The court assured the petitioner that his plea will also be considered along with the other pending petitions that have questioned the arbitrary Ordinance issued by the Centre refusing to accept any money in old currency notes after December 30, 2016 and exempting only such persons who remained out of the country from November 8-December 30, 2016 to deposit the demonetised currency with the RBI. Shukla now awaits the Court’s final order.