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| S.K. Todi |
The high court on Wednesday heard the bail petition of AMRI Hospitals owner-director S.K. Todi but deferred the verdict as the judges needed time to go through the documents.
The industrialist’s lawyer cited two Supreme Court orders to claim that Todi’s detention after being chargesheeted amounted to “additional punishment”.
“The Supreme Court has recently observed that keeping accused in jail before the completion of trial should be considered additional punishment. The accused should get bail after being chargesheeted,” counsel Ranjit Kumar submitted before the division bench of Justice Asim Kumar Roy and Justice Asim Kumar Ray.
Todi has been in custody for 118 days since December 9, the day the fire broke out at the Dhakuria hospital, leading to 91 deaths.
Gupta, in an attempt to strengthen his case, also referred to the bail granted to the four other members of the managing committee — doctors Mani Chhetri and Pronab Dasgupta, and officials Preeta Banerjee and Satyabrata Upadhyay. “Like Todi, Chhetri and Dasgupta were also members of the hospital’s board of directors. So he, too, deserves bail,” Kumar submitted.
The managing committee used to meet once a week to take stock of the functioning of the hospital, while the board of directors met once in three months.
The bench asked public prosecutor Debasish Roy, who opposed Todi’s bail plea, why the government had not appealed against the bail granted to some other accused.
“This court may think the state would not move a higher court seeking cancellation of the bail granted to the other accused, but that is not the case. The government has already filed petitions in the high court praying for the cancellation of Dasgupta, Preeta and Upadhyay’s bail,” Roy replied.
“The state has moved the Supreme Court against the bail granted to R.S. Agarwal and will do so with regard to R.S. Goenka, Manish Goenka, Prashant Goenka and Ravi Todi, all members of the board,” the lawyer added.
After hearing both sides, the bench observed: “We have to go through the documents (relating to the case) again before passing the order.”
