Satyendar Jain was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on May 30
Delhi Minister Satyendar Jain claimed "memory loss because of Covid" during his questioning on money laundering allegations, the Enforcement Directorate told a Delhi court on Tuesday.
A CBI court reserved its order on the bail plea of Satyendar Jain after a long hearing.
"Satyendar Jain said he had lost his memory because of the effect of Covid," Additional Solicitor General S Raju told the court.
Mr Jain made the claim "when confronted with documents relating to his membership of trusts that received money from hawala transactions," according to the government lawyer.
The Delhi Minister's lawyer, arguing his bail request, said, "No case of money laundering is made out against him."
"There is no possibility of Jain's running away. He went out of India during the investigation and came back. There is no possibility of him tampering with the evidence. There is no complaint of threats to witnesses. The agency has registered the statement of witnesses. He also had appeared before the ED seven times and his statements were recorded," lawyer N Hariharan said.
The prosecution, however, said witnesses had been threatened and investigations are still pending, so Mr Jain could influence the witnesses. "He is involved in money laundering using the hawala channel," the Additional Solicitor General said.
Mr Jain was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on May 30. He is in judicial custody till June 27.
He is accused of laundering money through four companies allegedly linked to him. The money was used to buy land, the Enforcement directorate said.
Mr Jain's lawyer said the companies that were not controlled by him as he had a very small share. "Companies and shareholders are separate entities. The property of the company is not considered as the property of shareholders," he said.
"The trust about which ED is talking about, my client had resigned from them before check period of 2015-2017. He has nothing to do with those trusts. Apart from that, he is suffering from sleep apnea," said Mr Jain's lawyer.
The Additional Solicitor General told the court Mr Jain had not cooperated with the investigation and his answers "were always evasive."