2 directors of realty firm M3M granted bail by SC in money laundering case

The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted bail to Basant Bansal and Pankaj Bansal, directors of Gurugram-based realty group M3M, in a money laundering case.

A bench of justices A S Bopanna and Sanjay Kumar, which had reserved the verdict on September 11 after hearing submissions of lawyers, granted the relief to the directors of the realty firm.

The Bansals had moved the top court against the July 20 order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court which had dismissed their bail pleas, saying the case is quite serious in nature.

Basant and Pankaj Bansal were earlier arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the money laundering probe linked to the alleged bribery case.

The top court on August 11 had sought responses from the Centre and the Enforcement Directorate on the bail plea of the accused directors against the high court order refusing to release them on bail in the ED's probe linked to an alleged bribery case against a former judge.

The money laundering case in which Basant Bansal and Pankaj Bansal have been arrested pertains to an FIR filed by the anti-corruption bureau of the Haryana Police in April against Sudhir Parmar, a former special judge for ED and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) cases who was posted in Panchkula, his nephew and a third M3M group director Roop Kumar Bansal.

According to the FIR, the ED said, reliable information was received that Parmar was allegedly showing favouritism to accused Roop Kumar Bansal, his brother Basant Bansal and real estate firm IREO owner Lalit Goyal in the ED and CBI cases pending against them in his court.

Parmar was suspended by the Punjab and Haryana High Court after the registration of the ACB case.

The ED has said it has collected "incriminating evidence such as bank statements and money trail, etc." with respect to the allegations in the FIR before making the arrests.