New Delhi. The Supreme Court has extended the interim bail of Saumya Chaurasia, deputy secretary of former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, in a case related to the alleged coal duty scam. Chaurasia is the accused in this case. The bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Ujjwal Bhuyan has fixed November 27 for the next hearing of the case.
The bench said in its order dated October 25, “In the meantime, the interim order will continue.” The apex court, while granting interim bail to Chawrasia on September 25, had said that he had been in custody for more than a year and nine months and charges had not been framed against him before the trial began.
The court, however, directed the Chhattisgarh government not to reinstate Chaurasia in service till further orders and ordered that he (Chaurasia) should appear in the lower court whenever required and should not influence any witness. Chawrasia has challenged the August 28 order of the High Court, in which he was denied bail. On December 14, 2023, the apex court, while rejecting the bail plea of Chaurasia, had said that prima facie she was involved in money laundering.
It had said that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has collected sufficient evidence to conclude that Chawrasia was actively involved in the offense of money laundering as defined in Section 3 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PLLA). The federal probe agency in 2022 had alleged a “larger conspiracy” to perpetrate a “coal-duty scam” in the natural resource-rich state in which around Rs 540 crore was “extorted” in the last two years. The money laundering case has arisen from a complaint filed by the Income Tax Department.