The Supreme Court has clarified in a judgment that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) need not furnish a person accused under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) with a copy of the grounds of detention at the time of his arrest.
A Bench headed by Justice Bela M. Trivedi held that the written communication of the grounds of arrest need to be provided only within a “reasonable period” of the arrest, that is, within 24 hours of the arrest.
The judgment comes amid debate that non-communication of the grounds of arrest was a violation of Article 22(1) of the Constitution, which upholds the fundamental right of any person who is in custody to be informed as to why he has been arrested.
The question
Justices Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma were asked to decide “whether the action of the ED in handing over the document containing the grounds of the arrest to the arrestee and taking it back after obtaining the endorsement and his signature thereon, as a token of his having read the same, and in not furnishing a copy thereof to the arrestee at the time of arrest would render the arrest illegal under Section 19 of the PMLA, 2002.”
Replying in the negative, Justice Trivedi, in her judgment for the Bench, said “in our opinion the person arrested, if he is informed or made aware orally about the grounds of arrest at the time of his arrest and is furnished a written communication about the grounds of arrest as soon as may be i.e as early as possible and within reasonably convenient and requisite time of 24 hours of his arrest, that would be sufficient compliance of not only Section 19 of the PMLA but also of Article 22(1)”.
The court laid down the law while dismissing an appeal filed by Supertech chairman Ram Kishor Arora challenging a Delhi High Court order affirming his arrest by the ED in a money laundering case.
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