Supreme Court agrees to review ECIR, bail conditions of its PMLA verdict | India News

NEW DELHI: Less than a month after upholding stringent powers of the Enforcement Directorate under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to review two aspects of the much-criticised judgment — non-provision of the Enforcement Case Information report (ECIR) to the accused and stringent conditions making it difficult for the accused to get bail.
A bench of Chief Justice NV Raman and Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and CT Ravikumar said prima facie the court was of the view that two aspects of the July 27 judgment needed reconsideration — one, the finding that ECIR is not FIR and hence no mandatory need to provide it to the accused; and second, the negation of the cardinal “presumption of innocence (till found guilty by a court of law)” principle.

Appearing for Karti Chidamabaram and others, senior advocate Kapil Sibal and AM Singhvi made an all-out attempt to persuade the bench to take up complete review of the PMLA judgment which was delivered by a bench headed by Justice AM Khanwilkar few days before his retirement. But solicitor general Tushar Mehta pre-empted their endeavour by arguing that review petitions are unlike writ petitions, where the entire gamut of issues could be argued. He insisted that the SC should limit it to the two flagged issues.

With Sibal and Singhvi protesting, the bench added ‘prima facie’ before stating the two issues in its order. The SC issued notice to the Union government and sought its response in four weeks.
Sibal argued that it is unthinkable that the judgment allowed prosecution of accused for money laundering for an offence which was committed prior to 2002, when the PMLA came into force. “The whole judgment is full of errors and needs a complete review,” he argued.

However, the CJI-led bench said, “No need for elaborate arguments. We feel only two aspects of the judgment, which we stated, requires a re-look. In principle we are completely in support of measures for prevention of dealings in black money and money laundering. The country cannot afford such type of offences to continue. The object (of PMLA) is noble and the procedural aspects, which you are having objections to, prima facie we feel these two areas — non-provision of ECIR and reversal of presumption of innocence — only requires relook.”
“We will look into other procedural safeguards when we hear it,” the bench said.
The SG said that the PMLA is in sync with global legal requirements as well as the Constitution. If the law is tinkered with, India may lose out in getting cooperation from other countries in money laundering cases, he said.

The CJI said, “We are not opposing any of the actions of the government and its agencies to stop money laundering, or bringing back black money or laundering of black money. All these are serious offences which have to be taken to their logical conclusion. It is definitely a serious issue. We are not doubting the object or goal of the law. But we want to examine these two limited issues.”

The SC asked the parties to give their submissions on the scope of review. “It is a review petition, the court cannot go into all the issues,” the SC said and extended the interim protection given to petitioners for another four weeks. “Let the petitions be listed after four weeks before an appropriate bench,” the SC said.