Supreme Court Rejects Review Petition, Upholds Limits on Enforcement Directorate Arrests
Court Ruling Requires Written Reasons, Rejects Arbitrary Detentions
The Enforcement Directorate cannot arbitrarily arrest someone and must provide the reasons for the arrest, according to a five-month-old ruling upheld by the Supreme Court, which denied the Center's request for a review.
The most recent decision follows accusations that the government is intimidating political rivals with the use of its investigative agencies; critics point to the detention of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal by the ED on Thursday as the most recent example of this behavior.
Along with dismissing the Center's review petition on Wednesday, the bench of Justices A.S. Bopanna and Sanjay Kumar turned down a request for an open court hearing. On Friday, the formal order was posted. "The request for an oral hearing was denied. We do not believe the contested order contains any mistakes, much less one that would call for reconsideration. Thus, the review applications are denied, according to the ruling.
In October of last year, the court decided that an accused person has a basic and legal right to know the reason for their detention and that no one may be arbitrarily detained, not even under the strict Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
It had decided that trial judges could not regularly remand such accused in detention by relying just on the ECIR, which is the ED's version of the FIR, or other documents provided by the ED, without using their own judgment.
The statement went on to say that the ED, which has extensive authority under the PMLA, is not supposed to be retaliatory and that it must seem to be operating with the greatest integrity, impartiality, and fairness.
Additionally, the October 2023 ruling said that an arrest was not always warranted just because someone did not answer to an inquiry or summons.
The decision's author, Justice Sanjay Kumar, said, "...the appellants' failure to reply to the ED's questions would not be sufficient in itself for the Investigating officer to opine that they were liable to be arrested under Section 19 (of the PMLA)".
