By IANS
New Delhi : Extradited mobster Abu Salem's companion Monica Bedi moved Supreme Court Friday, seeking a waiver on its condition that she surrender her original passport before her release on bail.
A bench headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and including Justice Tarun Chatterjee and Justice R.V. Raveendran ordered the listing of Bedi's plea Monday.
Senior counsel K.T.S. Tulsi told the bench that his client, Bedi, needed the court's waiver to the condition that she surrender her original passport before her release on bail in a fake passport case in Hyderabad.
Tulsi said Bedi was not in possession of her original passport as it had been confiscated by the Portuguese authorities in Lisbon after her arrest along with Abu Salem.
Bedi was acquitted this week by a Bhopal court in another case related to the alleged possession a fake passport.
In the present case, a Hyderabad court had convicted and sentenced her with five years of jail for possession of yet another fake passport. The Andhra Pradesh High Court, however, reduced the sentence to three years. But it dismissed her bail plea, which cited that she had already undergone her full three years of jail term since her arrest in Lisbon.
She went to the apex court to appeal against the high court order, and the former granted her bail on the condition that she surrender her passport to the judicial magistrate in Hyderabad.
Bedi was arrested along with mobster Abu Salem at a Lisbon shopping mall Sep 18, 2002 following an Interpol red corner notice issued at the behest of India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
She was brought back to India along with Salem, who was extradited to India Nov 11, 2005 – 12 years after he allegedly helped plan the terror bombings in India's financial capital.