The Supreme Court of India on Thursday reserved its verdict on the anticipatory bail plea filed by Congress leader Pawan Khera in a criminal defamation case lodged by Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, wife of Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.

A bench comprising Justices J.K. Maheshwari and Atul Chandurkar heard the matter after Pawan Khera challenged the Gauhati High Court decision that had earlier denied him pre-arrest bail in the case.

During the hearing, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Khera, argued that the Congress leader faced a real possibility of arrest and that there was no legal basis for custodial interrogation in the matter.

He submitted before the court that his client had serious apprehensions regarding arrest and alleged that public remarks attributed to Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma indicated an intention to take aggressive action against Khera.

Questioning the necessity of arrest in a defamation case, Singhvi argued that even if the allegations against Khera were assumed to be true, arrest was not justified. He told the court that the demand for custodial interrogation appeared to be driven by hostility rather than legal requirements.

The case stems from allegations made by Pawan Khera during a press conference, where he claimed that Riniki Bhuyan Sarma held multiple foreign passports, owned undeclared luxury properties in Dubai, and had links to shell companies in the United States.

Following these remarks, a criminal defamation complaint was filed, leading to legal proceedings in Assam.

Earlier, the Gauhati High Court had rejected Khera’s anticipatory bail plea, observing that custodial interrogation was necessary to determine the source of the allegedly false documents on which the allegations were based.

The High Court noted that investigators needed to identify how the documents reached the Congress leader, and therefore held that pre-arrest bail was not appropriate at that stage.

In the Supreme Court, Khera’s counsel argued that denying anticipatory bail in such circumstances undermined the very objective of legal protection against arbitrary arrest. He also criticised the issuance of a non-bailable warrant, saying such action was disproportionate in a case of this nature.