Observing that a plea seeking suspension of sentence should be considered expeditiously and not allowed to swing like a pendulum for hyper-technical reasons, the Supreme Court on February 20 granted gutkha baron J.M. Joshi (father of actor-producer Sachin Joshi) interim bail. The 67-year-old was sentenced to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment last month for helping Anees Ibrahim, brother of global terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, set up a gutkha factory in Pakistan. The apex court considered Joshi’s advanced age and ailments before granting bail.
Joshi’s lawyers have now moved the special MCOCA court which had convicted him, to complete the release formalities. They had moved the apex court after a high court division bench on February 10 refused to hear his appeal and a plea for suspending the conviction.
Through an administrative order on February 7, the Chief Justice of the Bombay high court had directed that J.M. Joshi’s appeal be heard along with an appeal by the state against the 2018 discharge of another accused. But the division bench refused to entertain the appeal of Joshi on the grounds that it can be taken up by a single judge bench and referred it back for reconsideration of the administrative order. Stating that the appeal could as well have been heard by a division bench, the apex court requested the high court Chief Justice to take an administrative call on the appeal returned by the division bench, within two weeks. It asked the high court registry to place Joshi’s appeal before the appropriate court as per the CJ’s decision with a request that a decision be taken expeditiously (within four weeks) on the suspension plea.
On January 9, Joshi, Farukh Mansuri (a 1993 Bombay bomb blasts accused) and Jamiruddin Ansari were convicted for offences under the IPC and the stringent MCOCA over setting up the factory in Pakistan.