Supreme Court grants bail to businessman Vijay Nair in liquor policy case
The principle of ‘bail as the rule and jail as the exception’ would be defeated if he remained in custody without a trial, the bench said.
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The Supreme Court on Monday granted bail to businessman and Aam Aadmi Party’s former communications-in-charge Vijay Nair in the liquor policy case, Live Law reported.
Nair, who was also the former chief executive officer of event management company Only Much Louder, was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in September 2022. He was the first one to be arrested in the case.
On Monday, a bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and SVN Bhatti said that the principle of “bail as the rule and jail as the exception” would be defeated if Nair remained in custody without a trial.
The court noted that the “right of liberty guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution is a sacrosanct right” required to be respected even in cases where stringent provisions were incorporated through special enactments.
Nair had been in custody for over 23 months and his incarceration as an undertrial could not be a mode of punishment without the trial having commenced in the case, the court noted.
“The universal proposition of bail being the rule and jail being the exception will be entirely defeated if petitioner is kept in custody as an undertrial for such long duration particularly when in the event of conviction, the final sentence can only be seven years in the maximum,” it added.
The court granted bail...
