New Delhi [India], June 9 : The Delhi High Court on Tuesday reserved its order on the bail plea of Ashok Kumar Pal, former Chief Financial Officer of Reliance Power Ltd, who was arrested in a money laundering case linked with an alleged fake Bank Guarantee given to Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) for a tender.
Pal has been in custody since October 10, 2025.
Justice Madhu Jain reserved the order on the bail plea till Wednesday after hearing submissions of counsel for Pal. His regular bail plea was dismissed by the trial court on March 11, 2026.
Senior advocate N Hariharan alongwith Siddharth Yadav, Alok Kumar and Varun Chandok, appeared for Ashok Kumar Pal.
During the hearing, it was submitted that the petitioner has been in custody since October, and the case is at the pre-cognisance stage. They argued that he can not be kept in long incarceration without trial, and it will take time as the cognisance is yet to be taken.
Senior advocate Hariharan further argued that the Supreme Court in several cases has ruled that Article 21 (life and personal liberty) will prevail over the twin conditions of section 45 of PMLA. It was also submitted that there is no generation of proceeds of crime. The petitioner served as Chief Financial Officer in Reliance Power Limited.
He also submitted that the maximum punishment is 7 years under PMLA, the petitioner has been in custody for 8 months, and he cooperated in the investigation, and his statement was recorded. Even thereafter, he was arrested in October 2025.
A bail plea came for hearing before a vacation bench after filing with liberty granted by the Supreme Court. His bail plea was earlier listed for hearing on July 8.
On the other hand, Advocate Zoheb Hossain, special counsel for ED, opposed the bail plea, saying the allegations were serious in nature.
"It is a case of an attempt to use a fake Bank Guarantee, which attracts the offence of PMLA. He has been in custody for the last 8 months, which is not long in view of Section 45 of PMLA," Advocate Hossain argued.
The ED also said that PMLA is a special law and has an overriding effect on the general law.
The petitioner has stated that the genesis of the controversy revolves around furnishing a Bank Guarantee (BG) towards earnest money deposit to Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI) as part of a tender condition.
The petitioner stated, "The Bank Guarantee issued by FirstRand Bank was discovered to be forged. There is no gainsaying that the intention of the Applicant, acting on behalf of Reliance NU BESS Limited, was bona fide since the inception of the transaction, for he derives no benefit by knowingly procuring a forged BG. Thus, "intent", a prerequisite of Sec. 3 of PMLA, 2002, evident from the use of the expression "indulge or knowingly assists or knowingly is a party", stands obliterated qua the Applicant.
It was also stated by the petitioner that Pal's arrest, per se, was illegal for having failed to prima facie satisfy the twin test of "justifiable reasons to believe in relation to arrest" and "necessity for arrest".