Punjab and Haryana High Court dismisses anticipatory bail plea of SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia

Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday dismissed the anticipatory bail plea of SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia, who has been booked under the NDPS Act. Majithia’s counsel Asrhdeep Singh Cheema said the court of Justice Lisa Gill dismissed the anticipatory bail plea. Cheema said, the high court was requested to extend the interim protection for seven days for moving the Supreme Court. However, the counsel said the detailed order is awaited. The court orders came following the hearing of arguments of both sides. The court on 10 January had granted interim protection to Majithia from the arrest in the matter while directing him to join the investigation on 12 January. It had also imposed some conditions, including not leaving the country, on the Akali leader. The court had extended the interim protection on January 18. Majithia (46), who was booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act on 20 December last year, had moved the high court seeking anticipatory bail. His anticipatory bail plea was rejected by a Mohali court on December 24. Majithia is the brother-in-law of Sukhbir Badal and the brother of former Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal. The former Punjab minister was booked under the NDPS Act on the basis of a 2018 report of a probe into a drugs racket operating in the state. The report was filed by the anti-drug special task force (STF) chief Harpreet Singh Sidhu in the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2018. The 49-page FIR in the matter was registered by the state Crime Branch at its Mohali police station. Majithia was booked under sections 25 (punishment for allowing one’s premises for its use for the commission of an offence), 27A (for financing sale, purchase, production, manufacture, possession, transportation, use or consumption, import and export or any act pertaining to narcotics) and 29 (abetting or plotting an offence) of the NDPS Act. In his bail plea, the SAD leader had submitted that the Congress government in Punjab had “left no stone unturned to misuse its powers and position for wreaking vengeance upon its political opponents”.