‘Chargesheet not incomplete’ | Doesn’t matter that CBI filed ‘trunk of documents’ later: Court while rejecting bail to Deshmukh in graft case

Deshmukh had sought default bail on the grounds that the chargesheet filed by the CBI against him on June 2 was “incomplete” as it was only 59 pages and did not contain documents mentioned in the annexures.

Special Judge S H Gwalani said in his order passed on Monday that the CBI had complied with all requirements of law when filing its chargesheet on June 2 within the stipulated time period.

“Not filing of the documents and statements of witnesses along with the report on 02.06.2022 does not make that report an incomplete report,” the court said.

It added that the report filed on June 2 mentioned the names of the parties involved, nature of information, names of persons who appeared to be acquainted with the circumstances of the case, the offence alleged to have been committed by each of the accused with other information including when they were arrested. It said all this “necessary information” was present in the report as per law.

“It, therefore, does not matter that trunk of documents were subsequently filed in the Registry of the Court,” the court said.

While Deshmukh, Sanjeev Palande and Kundan Shinde had submitted that the CBI had filed its report without completing investigation, the agency claimed that the accused were not entitled to claim access to the documents at this stage. The court agreed with the CBI’s contention that the chargesheet was filed on June 2 with two annexure list of witnesses and list of documents. It said that the vacation court then had granted time to the agency to submit documents before June 8 and the CBI had complied with it on June 7. The accused filed for default bail on June 8.

The three accused were arrested by the CBI in April. They are already in custody in a case of alleged money-laundering filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).