The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday submitted before the Kerala High Court that the State government had constituted a judicial commission headed by former High Court Judge V.K. Mohanan with a view to impeding the investigations being carried out by the ED and NIA into the diplomatic gold smuggling and money laundering cases.
The submission was made by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appearing for the ED when a petition challenging the constitution of the commission came up before Justice P.B. Suresh Kumar for hearing.
The commission has been constituted to inquire into the allegations that Swapna Suresh and Sandeep Nair, prime accused in the gold smuggling and money laundering cases, were compelled to give statements implicating Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and other officials in the gold smuggling case.
He submitted that the judicial commission had been constituted for circumventing the High Court verdict quashing the two First Information Reports (FIRs) filed by the State police against some unnamed officials of the ED, Kochi, for allegedly forcing the caused to give false statements against the Chief Minister and other government officials.
The Solicitor General submitted that, in fact, it was the Special Court constituted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) which could deal with the allegations of such nature and the government could not conduct a parallel inquiry by way of appointing a judicial commission. Moreover, a judicial commission could not be constituted to inquire into a matter in which a criminal investigation was being conducted under the monitoring of a court.
He further contended that the State government lacked inherent jurisdiction to appoint a judicial commission. The Central government alone could constitute a commission to deal with matters under List I of the Constitution.
Advocate General K. Gopalakrishna Kurup contended that the ED's petition was not maintainable as a department under the Central government could not file a petition against a State government. A department was not a body corporate that could sue or be sued.
Since the matter involved a dispute between the State and Centre, the ED should have approached the Supreme Court under Article 131. Besides, the ED was not trying to enforce any fundamental or statuary right by filing the writ petition under Article 226.
