Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate RB Chorge remanded Jain to judicial custody till Monday, July 6. Jain's lawyers will present their arguments to the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate at 3 pm on Monday. The ED, which approached the court late in the afternoon to ask for judicial remand has also asked that Jain be transferred to Delhi since the case is being investigated by officers in that office. It says that Jain is avoiding presence before the ED and is likely to `go beyond the clutches of law and tamper with evidence.'

A spokesman for Jain said that the ED didn't really have any fresh questions to ask since they had interrogated him 19 times (and for 25 hours) in the past fewmonths, and that this was yet another attempt to harass him.

ED sources, however, said that while it was true that they had interrogated Jain several times, Jain had never been questioned at length as he had always complained of chest pains. So while the interrogations may have been long, they were punctuated by frequent interruptions by doctors.

Today's arrest warrant, Jain's spokesman said, was served when he was entering the lift of his residence. According to the spokesman, Jain had offered to be interrogated, but only in a hospital, and was in fact on his way to the JJ Hospital with the ED team.

Jain was first detained by ED officials on the night of January 4 last year at the airport when he was going abroad. What followed, for the next sixteen months, was a battle with Jain's aides alleging harassment and the ED saying that Jain was using his heart ailment as an excuse for avoiding any serious questioning. At one time, the Supreme Court which heard the matter, opined that saying that Jain'squestioning should be subject to the opinion of cardiologists would impair the ED's questioning and probe.

With a panel of doctors recommending that Jain be allowed to go abroad for treatment, he underwent a bypass operation on March 2 and also had a new `defibrillator' implanted in his heart. Jain returned to India on May 31.

The two cases against Jain relate to allegedly sending abroad the proceeds of the sale of shares of the Bank of Rajasthan, as well as making payments of $21,000 from his foreign bank account for purchasing a company owned by a M.M. Sehgal in New Delhi. In the first case, Jain sold shares to Keshav Bangur and the premium paid on this is alleged to have been sent abroad through Arun Kumar Bajoria in 1992-93 -- Bangur first made this statement to the ED, but later retracted and said that he was coerced to say this.

Another transfer of $11,000 to M/s Geard and Davis of the US is also under scrutiny. According to the ED, in a separate case, Jain had also proposed at one time to providea bank guarantee of $11.2 mn from one of his foreign bank accounts. He has been asked to explain this.