[Amruta Fadnavis Complaint] Bombay High Court Dismisses Bookie Anil Jaisinghani's Plea Alleging Illegal Arrest

The Bombay High Court on Monday dismissed bookie Anil Jaisinghani's plea alleging illegal arrest in the case filed by deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis's wife - Amruta Fadnavis.

The bench of Justice AS Gadkari and PK Naik passed the order.

Fadnavis has alleged that Aniksha Jaisinghani, Anil Jaisinghani's daughter, attempted to bribe her with Rs 1 Crore to seek her “intervention” in a criminal case involving her father. Further, they also allegedly tried to extort Rs 10 Crores from her.

Anil Jaisinghani was arrested from Gujarat along with his cousin Nirmal Jaisinghani and remanded to police custody till March 27, 2023.

According to the petition filed by the two, they were arrested/taken into custody on March 19, 11:45 PM at Godhra. They were produced before the magistrate on March 21.

According to the petition, there was deliberate delay in producing the petitioners before the magistrate and the police officials did not comply with mandatory provisions of the CrPC.

The petitioners were not produced before the Magistrate within twenty-four hours of arrest as mandated by section 167 of CrPC, the petitioners represented by Mrigendra Singh argued. Both petitioners were produced before the magistrate after 36 hours of their arrest, he added.

The duo alleged that Fadnavis' FIR is concocted to falsely implicate Anil Jaisinghani. Further, the police did not comply with sections 41 and 41A of the CrPC in making the arrests, the petition states.

Section 41 provides the circumstances when police may arrest person without a warrant. Section 41-A provides that when arrest of the person is not required under section 41(1), a notice has to be issued to the person against whom a complaint has been made, or credible information has been received, or reasonable suspicion exists that he has committed to cognizable offence to appear before the police officer. Further, as long as the person continues to comply with the notice, he shall not be arrested unless the police officer opines it's necessary and records reasons for the arrest.

"Because it is a political matter, my client was arrested by Gujarat police. Everything was being monitored by the complainant's husband holding charge of [state] home minister," Mrigendra Singh argued. He said there is a case pending against Anil in Ahmedabad for two years and Gujarat police instead of producing him before a magistrate there handed him to Mumbai cops. Singh said transit remand was not obtained from the nearest magistrate.

However, Advocate General Birendra Saraf gave a detailed chart justifying the arrest. He said that the duo could only be produced before a magistrate who had jurisdiction to hear the matter and not before any Magistrate. Therefore their arrest wasn't illegal, he said.

He said Anil was brought to Mumbai at 2.20pm on March 20. He was arrested at 5pm and they were produced before court at 11am on May 21. "As long as I produce him before a magistrate, excluding time for travel, there can be no grievance," Saraf said.

Case Title: Anil Jaisinghani Vs State Of Maharashtra [Criminal Writ Petition No. 1168 Of 2023]

Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Bom) 179