New Delhi. The Supreme Court has questioned the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for denying default bail to an accused and filing supplementary chargesheet to keep such persons in jail indefinitely. A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Dutta told the central agency that this practice of effectively keeping the accused in jail without trial troubles the apex court.
Justice Khanna told Additional Solicitor-General SV Raju, appearing for the ED, “The purpose of default bail is that you do not arrest (an accused) until the investigation is completed. You cannot say (arrest an accused) that the trial will not start until the investigation is completed. “You cannot file a supplementary charge sheet and then the person is in jail without any trial.”
The top court said on Wednesday, “In this case, the person has been behind the bars for 18 months. This is troubling us. In any case, we will take it up and we are giving you notice in this. “When you arrest an accused, the trial should begin.”
The court had made similar observations in April last year; At that time, a bench of Justices Krishna Murari and CT Ravikumar had said, “Without completing the investigation, a chargesheet cannot be filed by an investigating agency to deprive an arrested accused of the right to default bail…”
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Tags: enforcement directorate, Supreme Court
FIRST PUBLISHED: March 20, 2024, 17:01 IST