Yes Bank Case: Supreme Court rejects anticipatory bail plea of Kapil & Dheeraj Wadhawan

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed the anticipatory bail pleas of DHFL promoters Dheeraj Wadhawan and Kapil Wadhawan in a money laundering case of Yes Bank being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The Wadhawans, now arrested, have challenged the Bombay High Court's May 12 order rejecting their plea for pre-arrest bail.

A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and B R Gavai dismissed a batch of four pleas after senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the Wadhawans, said that he was not pressing his prayer for relief.

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Solicitor general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the ED said that both the accused have been arrested and hence their plea for anticipatory bail becomes infructuous. The bench dismissed the pleas as withdrawn. The high court had refused to grant pre-arrest bail to DHFL promoters, noting that their custodial interrogation was required to unearth the conspiracy and modus operandi in the multi-crore scam.

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The Wadhawans are in jail after being earlier arrested by the CBI in a separate case related to the Yes Bank scam. They had moved the high court for an anticipatory bail in the money laundering case and another case pertaining to alleged irregularities in the investment of employees' provident fund of Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL). The high court had noted in its order that the applicants were not co-operating with the process of law and that the ED had issued several summonses to both Kapil and Dheeraj seeking their presence for questioning in the cases. The court said although the Wadhawans responded to the summonses and notices issued to them by the ED, they evaded investigation by not appearing before the agency.

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What is the Yes Bank crisis?

Yes Bank started facing a crisis as it accumulated many bad loans in 2018 by lending to corporate defaulters such as DHFL, Jet Airways, and Cafe Coffee day, among others. Moreover, when RBI refused to extend the term of founder Rana Kapoor as chief executive in 2018, its management was severely hit with his successor Ravneet Gill managing to raise only one round of funds through a share sale to institutional investors. Currently, the CBI and ED have been investigating several investors who had received loans from Rana Kapoor. Meanwhile, Yes Bank has been restructured by the RBI with SBI as a major stakeholder at 48.21%.

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