New Delhi, May 11 (IANS) The Supreme Court on Monday granted bail to former Jharkhand Rural Development Minister and Congress leader Alamgir Alam and his private secretary Sanjeev Lal in a money laundering case linked to the alleged tender commission scam being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

A Bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and N. Kotiswar Singh ordered their conditional release after hearing special leave petitions (SLPs) challenging the Jharkhand High Court’s order refusing bail.

The apex court had earlier, on April 2, directed expeditious examination of four key witnesses in the case and declined interim relief at that stage.

The Justice Sundresh-led Bench had then instructed the trial court to complete the examination of the witnesses “at the earliest, preferably, within a period of four weeks”.

During the previous hearing, the counsel appearing for Alamgir Alam had argued that the 76-year-old Congress leader had remained in custody since May 2024 and that the trial was being delayed because of repeated supplementary prosecution complaints filed by the ED.

In the impugned order passed in July 2025, the Jharkhand High Court had refused bail, observing that there was no “reason to believe” that the accused were not involved in handling proceeds of crime.

A single-judge Bench of Justice Sujit Narayan Prasad had stressed that “corruption poses a serious threat to our society” and observed that economic offences “constitute a class apart and need to be visited with a different approach in the matter of bail”.

It had further remarked that money laundering cases involving “deep-rooted conspiracies and huge loss of public funds” affect the financial health of the country and therefore require strict scrutiny at the stage of bail.

The Jharkhand High Court eventually held that sufficient material had been collected by the ED to show that the accused were “prima facie guilty of the alleged offences” and rejected the plea for regular bail.

The money laundering case stems from raids conducted by the ED on May 6, 2024, at premises linked to Jahangir Alam and his associate Sanjeev Lal, during which cash amounting to Rs 32.20 crore was allegedly recovered.

The federal anti-money laundering agency had also seized Rs 10.05 lakh and a diary purportedly containing details of commission transactions.

According to the ED, contractors executing projects under the Rural Development Department were allegedly required to pay around three per cent commission on the total tender value.

The probe revealed that nearly 1.35 per cent of the commission amount was routed to the then minister through his private secretary, while another portion was distributed among senior departmental officials and engineers.

The ED has claimed that the alleged scam generated proceeds of crime exceeding Rs 90 crore in relation to tender allocations worth nearly Rs 3,048 crore.

–IANS

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