Baazee CEO granted bail

The Delhi High Court today granted bail to baazee.com chief executive officer (CEO) and US citizen Avnish Bajaj, arrested in the obscene multi media service (MMS) case but asked him to surrender his passport and not to leave the country without permission of the trial court.

Vacation judge Justice Vikramjit Sen asked Bajaj, booked by the police under various sections of the Information Technology (IT) Act and the Indian Penal Code, to furnish two sureties of Rs one lakh each to the satisfaction of the trial court and take part in the investigations.

"The evidence that has been collected indicates only that the obscene material may have been unwittingly offered for sale on the website and that the heinous nature of the alleged crime may be attributable to some other person," it felt.

The court also took into account the fact that Bajaj had been cooperating with the police in their probe and "he was of Indian origin with family roots in our country".

"The nature of the alleged offence is such that the evidence has already crystalised and may even be tamper-proof," the court said agreeing with defence counsel Arun Jaitley.

On the preliminary objections raised by Delhi Police counsel Mukta Gupta that the accused should have gone to the Sessions Court before coming to the High Court after rejection of his bail plea by the Magistrate's Court, the court said: "The state ought to have articulated this objection at the very first instance, on the previous date of hearing."

However, it rejected Jaitley's argument that refusal of bail to Bajaj would adversely impact e-commerce and that India would be the eventual loser.

"These are not considerations which will prevail or tamper the courts' decision whether to grant or reject bail," Justice Sen observed.

The court observed in its order that at this stage of investigation, prima facie facts indicated that the sale consideration was not routed through Bajaj.

Gupta had submitted that the accused had failed to remove the obscene MMS clip from his website for 38 hours despite having been informed about it by a user.

She had also argued that the accused might be needed for custodial interrogation at a later stage and in such an eventuality, police would move a proper application before the trial court for his remand.

Gupta countered Jaitley's argument that the objectionable material was removed from the website as soon as possible.

Out of the eight sales of the obscene MMS transacted through the website, payments for 5 were made after they removed the objectionable material from their website and that the CEO could not be said to have exercised due diligence in the case, Gupta pointed out.

Bajaj was arrested on Friday with police claiming that baazee.com listed the alleged sexually explicit MMS clip involving a minor boy and his classmate of a reputed public school on its site for sale on November 24 and he did not make any effort to remove it until prodded.

On Saturday, a Delhi court had rejected Bajaj's bail plea and he was sent to judicial custody for six days.

Bailed out

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• Asked not to leave country without court's permission
• Told to furnish two sureties of Rs 1 lakh each
• Court notes that Bajaj has been cooperating in the investigation
• Judge feels, prima facie, the sale consideration was not routed through Bajaj