New Delhi. Enforcement Directorate ED has the right to arrest the corrupt and confiscate their property and this right is right. The Supreme Court has given this important decision. The court, in its decision, said that the change in the PMLA Act is correct and the arrest cannot be treated as arbitrary. The court, however, referred the issue of this right given to the ED through money bills to a 7-judge bench. Let us tell you that in the Supreme Court 242 applications were filed against arrest and seizure by many people including former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s son and MP Karti Chidambaram and former Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh. A special bench of Justice AM Khanwilkar, Justice Dinesh Maheshwari and Justice CT Ravikumar heard it. All the provisions of the Money Laundering Act were challenged in the applications. The Modi government had made all these provisions in this act. The petitions challenged the ED’s powers to search, arrest, confiscate, investigate and attach these as violations of fundamental rights.
Many lawyers, including Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi, had given their arguments in the court on behalf of those who filed the applications in this case. In his arguments, he had raised the issue of stringent conditions of bail, non-disclosure of grounds of arrest, non-delivery of ECIR copy to be registered as FIR, proceeds of crime, definition of money laundering, statement of accused etc. At the same time, the central government had defended the provisions of the law in the court. The central government had told the Supreme Court that due to this law, banks could recover Rs 18000 crore of Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, who fled abroad by swindling the banks.
Let us tell you that about 67000 crores of money laundering cases are going on in the Supreme Court right now. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the Supreme Court that 4700 cases are still under investigation. He had told that every year the number of such cases is also increasing. In the year 2015-16, there were 111 cases of PMLA. Now the number of these cases has gone up to 981. Still, there are fewer cases in India than such cases in other countries including America, Britain. He had also told that under the law, in the last 17 years, the proceeds of crime of 98368 crores were detected and confiscated. The Solicitor General had said that this law would also hurt the terrorists.