SC orders release of Monica Bedi

New Delhi, July 23: The Supreme Court today directed that Monica Bedi, a close associate of underworld don Abu Salem who is serving a three-year sentence in a Hyderabad jail for travelling on a forged passport, be released on bail without surrendering her passport.

A Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, Justice Tarun Chatterjee and Justice R V Raveendran, however, directed the Mumbai regional passport office to cancel her passport, which was issued to her on June 24, 1999.

The court ordered the cancellation after the father of Monica filed an affidavit in the apex court and submitted on oath that the passport issued to her daughter in 1999 was not traceable and had been lost. Therefore, his daughter cannot produce the passport and hence the direction issued by this court while granting bail to her to surrender her passport may be waived.

Additional Solicitor General Amarender Saran submitted before the court that he had no objection if the condition was waived subject to the cancellation of her passport by a consent order to which senior counsel KTS Tulsi, appearing for Monica, readily agreed .

Monica has already been acquitted in the Bhopal case while she has been granted bail in the Hyderabad case by the apex court.

She was sentenced to five-year imprisonment by a Hyderabad court which was commuted to three years by the Andhra Pradesh High Court on appeal.

UNI