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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a review plea against its own judgement that upheld the provisions of the Prevention Of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The plea would be heard tomorrow by a bench headed by Chief Justice of India, NV Ramana.
In July, the SC had backed the Enforcement Directorate’s powers of search, seize and arrest, provided within the act, saying that Section 19 that deals with the powers of ED does not suffer from the “vice of arbitrariness”.
The petitioners had argued that the powers of ED had been mostly misused, especially in the cases of Opposition leaders. They stated that there was absence of a procedure to commence investigation and summoning within the act, while the accused was not made aware of the contents of the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR).
The court had held that the ED is not required to share the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) copy with the accused, stating that the document is not equal to First Information Report (FIR).
The bench had also said that it was enough for the ED to disclose the grounds of the arrest at the time of the arrest.
The top court’s judgement was challenged by Congress’s Karti Chidambaram, the son of former Union minister P Chidambaram and former J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti.
The Central government, however, had justified the constitutional validity of the provisions of PMLA. The Centre has apprised the court that around 4,700 cases are being investigated by the Directorate of Enforcement, maintaining that PMLA is not a conventional penal statute but is aimed at necessarily preventing money laundering, regulating certain activities relatable to money laundering, aims at confiscating the “proceeds of crime” and the property derived therefrom and also requires offenders to be punished by the competent court after filing of a complaint.
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