The country is in the midst of the General Election, but it’s the ED (Enforcement Directorate) which is far more in the news than the EC (Election Commission). The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, May 16, that the ED could not arrest an accused under Section 19 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after a special court had taken cognizance of the complaint of money laundering. The Bench stated that when an accused appeared before a judge in pursuance of a summons, the agency would have to apply to the court concerned to obtain his or her custody. According to the court, such an accused is not required to apply for bail as he or she would not be treated as being in custody.

The ruling is another setback to the ED, which has been under intense judicial scrutiny in recent months and repeatedly accused by Opposition parties of overreach. These parties, especially AAP, have claimed that their leaders are being targeted by Central probe agencies at the behest of the ruling party. The ED’s allegedly unbridled powers under the PMLA have been the subject of a heated debate since 2017, when a Division Bench struck down the Act’s Section 45(1), which imposed additional conditions for grant of bail to the accused. However, this decision had been overruled by a July 2022 judgment of another SC Bench.

Meanwhile, the SC has asserted that no exception was made in granting interim bail to Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal in a money laundering case. ‘We said in our order what we felt was justified,’ the Bench said, adding that a critical analysis of the verdict was welcome. These observations have come two weeks after the court questioned the ED about the timing of Kejriwal’s arrest — in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections. Clearly, the ED has a lot of explaining to do in one case after another.
(Tribune, India)