A Delhi court on Thursday granted bail to Aam Aadmi Party leader Satyendar Jain in the case related to alleged irregularities in the tendering process for sewage treatment plant projects in Delhi, reported Bar and Bench.Jain was arrested on August 18, along with former Delhi Jal Board Chief Executive Officer Udit Prakash Rai and four others, by the Anti-Corruption Branch. It is unclear if the other accused persons have also been granted bail.While granting bail to Jain, Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh of the Rouse Avenue Courts questioned the timing of his “sudden arrest”, noting the unexplained 27-month gap between the registration of the first information report and his arrest, Live Law reported.The judge observed that the Anti-Corruption Bureau had not considered Jain’s physical custody necessary for more than two years and had also failed to point to any new circumstances that warranted his arrest.“When an investigating agency has conducted its investigation for years without arresting an accused, and the accused has joined the investigation process, a sudden arrest at the tail end of the investigation, without strong reasons and without a change in circumstances, tends to invite criticism that it is arbitrary,” the court was quoted as saying by Live Law.The judge also said that, prima facie, none of the WhatsApp chats linked Jain to the other accused persons. There were also no phone call records or SMS messages that could, at this stage, connect him to the alleged kickbacks and hawala transactions involving the other accused in the case.On August 19, the court had refused to declare his arrest illegal and had remanded him to judicial custody.The caseThe case had been registered on May 11, 2024, based on a complaint by the Directorate of Vigilance.The Anti-Corruption Branch alleged that technical specifications and other conditions in the tender for upgrading sewage treatment plants were manipulated to give undue advantage to a firm named Euroteck Environment by limiting competition.A pilot project was not conducted and essential parameters relating to treated effluent were left out of the tendering process, alleged the agency.These irregularities allegedly resulted in “significant financial implications” for the government exchequer.Apart from Jain and Rai, the agency had arrested Ankit Srivastava, a former contractual consultant with the water board, Nagendra Yadav, proprietor of M/s AN Enterprises, Raja Kumar Kurra, owner of M/s Euroteck Environment Private Limited and Pankaj Verma, proprietor of M/s Srijanhar.The Anti-Corruption Branch alleged that private persons, public servants and intermediaries regularly communicated about the tender process. It also claimed that it had found a financial trail linking them.It alleged that Srijanhar and AN Enterprises, which are allegedly linked to Eurotek, routed bribe payments to the former Delhi Jal Board chief executive officer and his relatives.Rai and his family members received Rs 1.52 crore through the company and used it to buy immovable property, the agency alleged.The Enforcement Directorate, which is conducting a parallel money laundering investigation, had earlier filed a chargesheet against Jain and 13 others.The central agency had alleged that a fraud of Rs 17.7 crore took place in the award of four tenders linked to sewage treatment work.Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.