One of the accused in the Antilla bomb scare case Manish Soni filed a bail application before a special NIA court on Tuesday. The accused has also been arrested for the murder of businessman Mansukh Hiran.
In his plea through advocate Rahul Arote, Soni has asked for bail on the grounds that his detention is illegal as he was not produced before the NIA court on Monday, when the court remanded him to judicial custody.
On Monday, when the NIA was supposed to produce Soni, it told the court that they had sought his judicial custody. Also, the magistrates' court before which Soni was produced to record his statement had remanded him to judicial custody. So, the agency did not produce him before the NIA court.
The special court had, however, gone on to remand him to judicial custody till July 17.
The NIA claimed that Soni had murdered Hiran at the behest of former police officer Pradeep Sharma and dismissed assistant police inspector Sachin Vaze. It had informed the court earlier that he had received a huge amount of money for it and that he and a co-accused Satish Mothkuri fled to Nepal soon after the murder. Soni, it had stated further, was driving the car in which the murder took place and Mothkuri had smothered Hiran.