Cool Ahmedabad

It was a day of dramatic twists and turns for one of Gujarat’s wealthiest entrepreneurs. A CBI team from Goa arrested Rajesh Adani, youngest brother of Adani group chairman Gautam Adani, on a four-year-old charge of evasion of customs duty to the tune of Rs 1.07 crore. Within hours of his arrest, Gujarat High Court granted Adani bail and asked the CBI to release him after Adani family filed a habeas corpus petition terming the arrest as illegal.

Rajesh Adani, who is the managing director of the Rs 26,000-crore Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL), was picked up by CBI sleuths from his residence in Judges Bungalows area early on Saturday morning. The anti-corruption branch of CBI Goa had registered a case against Adani and nine customs officials. The local CBI unit had no clue about the operation. Adani complained of chest pain and backache and was medically examined before he was taken to Mumbai from where the team would proceed to Goa.

“The allegations were that the customs officials in conspiracy with the private parties, dishonestly and by abuse of their official position facilitated import by undervaluing two consignments of naphta and one consignment of furnace oil. The consignments were imported by the Ahmedabad-based company and stored in a warehouse in Goa of a Mumbai-based company,” CBI said in a release.

AEL, the country’s largest export house, had imported the products on behalf of a company. When contacted, an AEL spokesperson expressed surprise at the arrest. “Rajesh Adani was not responsible for any day-to-day business operations... AEL had made arrangements to import certain petroleum products in 2005-06 and 2006-07 on behalf of licence/permission holders, who were responsible for fulfilling all formalities and payment of duties,” the company stated.

Later in the day, the Gujarat High Court justice RM Doshit granted interim bail to Adani till March 2, and kept further hearing of the matter on Tuesday before a division bench. Adani’s counsel argued that the arrest was illegal because the CBI did not follow the SC guidelines. Apart from the arguments that Adani was arrested without any show-cause notice and an arrest memo by CBI, the counsel contended that the accused was neither an absconder nor custodial interrogation of him was required in this case.