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Mahesh

21/12/23 12:59 PM IST

ED’s powers of arrest

In News
  • The Supreme Court  ruled that it is enough for the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to orally inform an accused of the grounds of their arrest at the time of arrest.
ED's power of arrest
  • Section 19 of the PMLA 2002 allows authorised ED officials to arrest persons based on material in their possession, which gives them a reason to believe that one is guilty of an offence punishable under that law.
  • However, the reasons for such belief must be recorded in writing, and the grounds of arrest be informed to the accused “as soon as may be.”
  • Importantly, anyone arrested shall, within 24 hours, be taken to a Special Court, Judicial Magistrate, or Metropolitan Magistrate.
  • However, Article 22(3)(b) exempts the application of these safeguards to persons held under any preventive detention law, such as the Gujarat Prevention of Antisocial Activities Act, 1985, and the Bihar Control of Crimes Act, 1981, among others.
Supreme court ruling
  • The Bench was acting on a plea by real-estate company Supertech Limited’s founder, Ram Kishor Arora, challenging an order of the Delhi HC.
  • On June 27, the Delhi HC dismissed Arora’s petition to declare his arrest illegal and violative of his fundamental right(s) to equality, life, and protection in respect of conviction for offences under Articles 14, 21, and 20.
  • Justices AS Bopanna and Sanjay Kumar held that to give true meaning to the constitutional and statutory mandate of Section 19(1) of informing the arrested person of the arrest grounds, “it would be necessary, henceforth,” that a copy of such written grounds be furnished to the arrested person, as a matter of course, without exception.
  • The SC has now ruled that the word “henceforth” in its earlier ruling implies its application to cases where the arrest took place after October 3, not before.
Implications
  • Although there is no constitutional or statutory prescription on the issue, the rule of precedents has evolved by practice in India to “prevent the possibility of inconsistent decisions on similar points of law by different benches of equal strength,” a Constitution Bench of the SC said in its 1989 ruling in UOI vs. Raghubir Singh.
  • The court also ruled that a statement of law by a Division Bench “is considered binding on a Division Bench of the same or lesser number of Judges,” adding that this has been followed in India by several generations of judges.
  • However, in Pradip Chandra Parija vd. Pramod Chandra Patnaik (2002), a Constitution Bench ruled that if two Benches of equal strength arrive at different conclusions on the same question of law, the matter must be referred to a higher Bench.
  • “If, then, the Bench of three learned Judges also comes to the conclusion that the earlier judgment of a Bench of three learned Judges is incorrect, reference to a Bench of five learned Judges is justified,” the court said.
Source- Indian Express

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