Munmun Kaur
Published On: February 03, 2022 at 13:23 IST
The Supreme Court on February 03 continued hearing a batch of Petitions concerned with the interpretation of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA).
Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal while referring to Section 19 of the PMLA contended before the Bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari, and CT Ravikumar that there had to be a procedure through which the Accused is informed about the Arrest so that he/she is entitled to seek constitutional remedies.
Senior Counsel while questioning the validity of Arrest on the exclusion of material said that if the person is aware of the grounds of Arrest only and no ECIR (Enforcement Case Information Report) is given to him/her, he/she has no material and without the material how can he/she ask for Bail.
Amidst the ongoing submission by Senior Counsel, Justice AM Khanwilkar the presiding Judge of the Bench remarked, “Just wondering how much judicial hours have been wasted in this case. Lawless paradise.”
Concluding his submissions Advocate Sibal said, “It’s not only lawless paradise but Bureaucrat’s paradise. We’ve created Frankenstine monster. It’s like “Be Lagam Ghoda” because there is no restraint. Laws of this nature should be dealt with as quickly as possible. I’d say we need to control this Frankenstein Monster that we’ve created.”
On the other hand, Senior Advocate Siddharth Luthra submitted that the Charge Sheet test should not “only” be considered for determining whether officers under ED are police officers or not. He referred to the definition of Investigation u/s 2(na) of PMLA and 2(h) of CrPC and said that both were the same and dealt with, “Proceedings for Collection of Evidence”.
Senior Counsel further referred to the additional powers that have been granted to ED Officers with regards to filing of closure reports under the provison to Section 44(1)(b) PMLA which is similar to the CrPC. where a closure report is filed under the same provision as that for filing of a Charge Sheet i.e. Section 173(2) CrPC; and for carrying out a further investigation [Explanation (ii) to Section 44(1) PMLA] which is also a power vested in Police officers under Section 173(8) CrPC.
During the course of the hearing, Justice AM Khanwilkar questioned Senior Counsel as to whether the ED officer was expected to maintain everything that a Police officer maintained under CrPC. To which the Senior Counsel said, “The police are governed under various regimes & they supplement with CrPC & they are sacrosanct. These (manuals & provisions by States on Police) are nuts & bolts but they do not supersede CrPC”.
