Cuttack, July 23: Orissa High Court will examine a written note of arguments by Mayurbhanj MP Rama Chandra Hansdah's counsel before deciding to grant him bail after two years and eight months in prison.

CBI arrested Hansdah on November 4, 2014, for his alleged links with Nabadiganta Capital Services, a major player in the deposit collection scam in the state. He has since been lodged at Jharapada jail in Bhubaneswar.

Hansdah, who was elected MP on a BJD ticket and suspended by the party soon after his arrest, has filed a fresh bail application.

The Lok Sabha MP has sought bail on the ground that the MPLAD scheme fund that was allotted to him has not been spent for the past three years and because of this various project works could not commence and people of the constituency were being deprived of the benefit of the schemes.

The bail petition came up on Friday.

"The single-judge bench of Justice S.K. Sahoo concluded hearing and reserved judgment but directed for submission of written note of the arguments by July 26," Hansdah's counsel Manas Ranjan Mohapatra said today.

On July 31, 2014, CBI had raided the houses of Rama Chandra Hansdah and two ex-MLAs Hitesh Bagarti and Subarna Naik.

During the raid, the CBI sleuths had seized Rs 28 lakh in cash and other documents from Hansdah's residence.

However, Hansdah, Bagarti and Naik were arrested on November 4, 2014, about a week after the arrest of the two directors of Nabadiganta Capital Services Pvt Ltd, which had allegedly collected several crores of rupees from investors by promising attractive returns.

After the high court rejected his bail petition on August 14, 2015, Hansdah had approached the Supreme Court for bail, but withdrew the bail application on September 24, 2015, to move afresh for bail after the trial court framed charges in the case.

"We have now sought bail as the trial in the case has commenced and 17 witnesses in the case have already been examined. Besides, the accused (Hansdah) has already remained in jail for two years and eight months," Mohapatra said.

The high court had rejected his bail petition on August 14, 2015, last year citing "availability of prima facie materials regarding his involvement in the commission of offences".

On March 28, 2016, the high court had rejected Hansdah's petition for interim bail.

"Taking into account the fact that further investigation of the case is under progress to unearth further evidence and other aspects of criminal conspiracy and money trailing and when the offence involved misappropriation of huge amount of public money, it would not be proper at this stage to release the petitioner (Hansdah) on bail," the court had observed.