‘No reason to believe Hemant Soren is guilty,’ says Jharkhand HC while granting bail to former CM

The Jharkhand High Court on Friday granted bail to former Chief Minister Hemant Soren in a money-laundering case linked to an alleged land scam, noting that there was “no reason to believe” that he was guilty of the alleged offence, Bar and Bench reported.

The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader has been in jail since January 31, when he was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the case. This was shortly after he resigned as the chief minister after being questioned by the central law enforcement agency.

The Enforcement Directorate has alleged that a “racket of land mafia” in Jharkhand was involved in tampering with official land records in Ranchi and Kolkata. Some of the land acquired through the forgery had illegally come into Soren’s possession, the agency alleged.

On Friday, Justice Rongon Mukhopadhyay, while allowing Soren’s bail application, said that there was no evidence directly linking the former chief minister to the possession of the land parcel in question, Live Law reported.

“There is ‘reason to believe’ that the petitioner is not guilty of the offence,” the court said. “On an overall conspectus of the case there is no likelihood of the petitioner committing a similar nature of offence.”

The court said that the “twin test” for grant of bail, mandated in all cases under the...

Read more