Three retired senior officials — a former Secretary to the Chief Minister (Accused No.31), a retired Special Deputy Collector who served as OSD in the Chief Minister's Office (Accused No.32), and a person alleged to have collected kickbacks (Accused No.33) — sought regular bail before the Andhra Pradesh High Court in connection with Crime No.21 of 2024, relating to alleged large-scale irregularities in the excise policy and functioning of APSBCL during 2019–2024, including discriminatory OFS allocation and manipulation of the manual OFS system. The petitioners had earlier been granted default bail by the Special Court, which was set aside by the High Court; their Special Leave Petitions before the Supreme Court were dismissed, though interim protection was continued to enable them to seek regular bail. The High Court heard arguments on the principles governing bail jurisprudence, including parity with co-accused already on bail, prolonged pre-trial incarceration as a violation of Article 21, completion of investigation, senior citizen status, and the State's objections regarding the gravity of the economic offence and the facilitating role of the petitioners. The court set out the applicable legal framework — including Supreme Court precedents on bail in economic offences and the constitutional safeguard under Article 21 — before proceeding to determine whether the petitioners were entitled to regular bail, but the judgment text as provided ends before the final operative order is stated.