Delhi High Court Refuses To “Throttle” ED Probe At Summons Stage Against Man Who Transacted With Lalu Yadav’s Family
Case: AMIT KATYAL v. DIRECTORATE OF ENFORCEMENT
Coram: Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma
Case No.: W.P.(CRL) 2981/2023
Court Observation: “Even otherwise, as held in several judicial precedents discussed above, this Court cannot throttle the investigative process at the stage of issuance of summons to the petitioner,”
“In this regard, it is relevant to note that it is not mandatory for the Directorate of Enforcement to furnish a copy of ECIR to the person who is under investigation, as held by Hon‘ble Apex Court in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary (supra), and the petitioner herein has only been summoned under Section 50 of PMLA,”.
“Thus, in these circumstances, when the petitioner has only been summoned under Section 50 of PMLA, and the ECIR is not available on record, nor the petitioner has made out any ground at this stage for which this Court should pass any direction to call upon the respondent to place before this Court a copy of ECIR, which is also one of the prayers in this petition, this Court is of the opinion that the prayer for quashing of ECIR is premature and without any merit.”
“It is also clear as per the scheme of PMLA that power to issue summons under Section 50 of PMLA is different from the power to arrest under Section 19 of PMLA, and the issuance of summons to join investigation and give some evidence or document to the investigation agency cannot be presumed to culminate into the arrest of person being so summoned,”.
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Delhi High Court Refuses To “Throttle”
