New Delhi: The Supreme Court Tuesday said that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) should maintain stringent standards of probity and not be vindictive in its functioning, while granting bail to Basant Bansal and Pankaj Bansal, directors of Gurugram-based realty group M3M, in a money laundering case.
The Bansals had moved the apex court through Advocate Malak Manish Bhatt challenging the July 20 order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which dismissed their bail pleas, saying the case is quite serious in nature. A bench comprising justices AS Bopanna and Sanjay Kumar said it speaks volumes about the ED and reflects poorly on their style of functioning, especially since the agency is charged with preserving the financial security of the country.
The apex court noted that the two directors were summoned on June 14 for questioning in an alleged money laundering case, however, they were arrested in another case registered by the ED on the same day. The bench said the clandestine conduct of ED in proceeding against the accused reeks "of arbitrariness".
The apex court, directing the immediate release of Bansals took serious exception to the ED officer orally reading out the grounds of arrest to the accused without supplying them with a written copy of the grounds for their arrest. The apex court observed the lack of any consistent or uniform practice followed by ED for the supply of grounds of arrest to the accused.
The apex court had reserved the verdict on September 11 after hearing submissions of lawyers. The Bansals challenged their arrest under Section 19 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and questioned the high court order which declined to set aside their arrest. The apex court stressed that the ED has to be transparent, above board and conform to pristine standards of fairness and probity and not be vindictive in its stand.
The apex court also noted that it would be necessary for a copy of the grounds of arrest to be furnished to the accused at the time of arrest. The bench said ED’s investigating officer merely read out the grounds of arrest, which does not fulfil the mandate of Article 22(1) of the Constitution and Section 19(1) of the PMLA.
The money laundering case in which Basant Bansal and Pankaj Bansal were arrested pertains to an FIR filed by the anti-corruption bureau of the Haryana Police in April against Sudhir Parmar, a former special judge for ED and CBI cases who was posted in Panchkula, his nephew and a third M3M group director Roop Kumar Bansal. Parmar was suspended by the high court after the registration of the ACB case.
According to the FIR, Parmar was allegedly showing “favouritism” to accused Roop Kumar Bansal, his brother Basant Bansal and real estate firm IREO owner Lalit Goyal in the ED and CBI cases pending against them in his court.
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