SC dismisses plea by ED against bail to Shivakumar

SC castigates govt for using quashed provision

The Supreme Court on Friday slammed the Enforcement Directorate on “doing a copy and paste” job by referring ex-Karnataka Minister D K Shivakumar as “former Home Minister and Finance Minister” of the country in its plea challenging the bail granted to the Congress MLA.

After being pointed out Shivakumar's counsel that the ED had lifted the contents from its petition filed earlier against former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, the top court dismissed the petition against the Delhi High Court's bail order to the senior Congress leader from Karnataka

"This is not the way you treat the citizens," a bench of Justices R F Nariman and S Ravindra Bhat said.

The court also expressed displeasure on being told that the investigating agency "resurrected" stringent Section 45 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act that had been quashed in 2017 for being violative of the right to liberty.

The top court rejected a contention by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that Rs 142 Cr of laundered money was found.

The court took a strong view of the matter after senior advocate A M Singhvi and Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Shivakumar contended that Section 45 provisions were resurrected.

A furious Justice Nariman told Solicitor General Mehta to tell the government to read the judgement passed on Thursday in the Sabarimala case.

"Our judgement is not something to be played upon," he said.

In 2017, an SC bench led by Justice Nariman struck down Section 45 of the PMLA, saying it was a drastic provision which turns on its head presumption of innocence of the accused.

Section 45 stated that no accused can be granted bail unless prosecutor gets an opportunity to oppose and if the prosecutor chooses to oppose it, the court has to be convinced that he was not guilty of the crime.

On Thursday, Justice Nariman with Justice D Y Chandrachud had dissented to majority view of referring to a larger bench of seven-judge bench the issue of entry of women to Sabarimala temple, allowed on September 28, 2018 judgement, along with similar issues of entry of Muslim women to mosque and Parsi women married to different faith to the fire temple and genital mutilation practice among Dawoodi Bohara community.

Justice Nariman had then said the SC judgement was final and binding on all and there is no option on compliance.

Meanwhile, the court issued notice to Income Tax authorities on a plea by Shivakumar against the Karnataka HC order that dismissed his plea for quashing of proceedings. It also directed no coercive action should be taken in the matter.