A Delhi High Court judge recused himself from hearing Sanjay Bhandari’s plea against a trial court’s “fugitive economic offender” tag. The matter was transferred after both sides failed to agree on the next hearing date.
A judge from the Delhi High Court recused himself on Thursday from a case involving UK-based arms consultant Sanjay Bhandari, who is contesting a trial court’s ruling that labeled him a “fugitive economic offender.”
Justice Girish Kathpalia was in the process of dictating the order and scheduling a hearing for Friday regarding the plea’s maintainability when he decided to transfer the case to another bench.
This decision was made after the counsels for both Bhandari and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) failed to agree on a hearing date.
The trial court is set to hear the case on August 2.
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Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing Bhandari, urged that the case be heard today since he would not be available on Thursday.
He requested that, if not today, the hearing be postponed for a few days, during which time the court should instruct the Enforcement Directorate (ED) not to seize Bhandari’s assets.
However, the ED’s counsel argued that the court should refrain from issuing any interim order without first hearing the agency’s arguments, as he had preliminary objections regarding the plea’s maintainability, suggesting it be heard on Friday instead.
As the court was drafting the order, Sibal remarked,
“Why don’t you (ED counsel) just get an order in your favour now and get it all done. Your lordship may pass any order, let it (assets) be confiscated, it does not matter.”
In response, ED’s lawyer Zoheb Hussain labeled this as “extremely unfair.”
With both counsels holding firm to their positions, the judge indicated that the matter could not be addressed in this way, stating,
“List before some other bench subject to orders of the judge in-charge of the criminal side tomorrow itself at 10:30 am.”
The trial court had declared Bhandari a “fugitive economic offender” in response to a plea from the ED, a decision that empowers the agency to seize his assets valued at crores of rupees.
District Judge Sanjeev Aggarwal stated that the court was satisfied that,
“Sanjay Bhandari, S/o Late R K Bhandari, is a fugitive economic offender under Section 12(1) of the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018, and is declared as such under the above provision(s) of the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018.”
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This ruling significantly supported the federal probe agency’s efforts, allowing it to confiscate Bhandari’s assets, whose prospects of returning to India have been severely diminished after a UK court recently denied his extradition.
Bhandari’s legal team contended that the ED’s move to declare him a fugitive was unfounded, asserting that “client’s stay could not be called illegal in the UK as he has a legal right to reside in the UK and the government of India is bound by the judgment of the UK court… Bhandari is legally living there, and declaring him a ‘fugitive’ in that scenario is legally wrong.”
The trial court noted that while the “extradition attempt may have failed, it will not make the accused an angel or immune from prosecution for the violation of Indian laws.”
Bhandari, who fled to London in 2016 following a raid by the Income Tax Department in Delhi, is facing a criminal case filed by the ED under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in February 2017, which was initiated after an Income Tax chargesheet was filed against him under the anti-black money law of 2015.
The court stated that when an accused chooses not to return to India, they cannot evade all legal consequences, including those outlined in Section 14 of the FEO Act.
It emphasized,
“In any case, those who play with fire should be known to be aware of its consequences,”
The court assessed Bhandari’s undisclosed foreign income or assets to be worth Rs 655 crore, with a total tax evasion, including penalties and interest, amounting to Rs 196 crore.
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The ED filed its first chargesheet against Bhandari in 2020 and is currently investigating his connections to Robert Vadra, the businessman husband of Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
In a supplementary chargesheet filed in 2023, the ED alleged that Bhandari acquired a property at 12 Bryanston Square in London in 2009, which was renovated “as per the directions of Robert Vadra,” with funds provided by Vadra.
Vadra has denied owning any London property, calling the allegations a “political witch-hunt” and asserting that he is being “hounded and harassed” for political reasons.
Bhandari, who was considered a tax resident in India in 2015, is also accused of hiding overseas assets using backdated documents, benefiting from assets not disclosed to Indian tax authorities, and falsely informing authorities that he had no overseas assets. He has, however, denied these allegations.
The ED has attached assets worth approximately Rs 21 crore belonging to Bhandari under the PMLA.