ED moves Delhi HC to expunge special court's observations against it in excise policy case

New Delhi, Mar 9 (PTI) The Enforcement Directorate has approached the Delhi High Court to expunge observations made by a trial court regarding its money laundering investigation while discharging former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and others in the CBI-probed excise policy case recently.

The ED said that the February 27 order was a "clear case of judicial overreach" because the court neither examined the agency's evidence nor heard it while passing strictures against it.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chargesheet relates to alleged irregularities in the 2021 Delhi excise policy introduced by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government. The CBI and the ED investigated the case independently.

The court of Special Judge Jitendra Singh made several observations regarding the PMLA and ED probe. The order specifically mentioned that the Supreme Court held in the 2022 Vijay Madanlal Choudhary case that once the foundational edifice of the predicate offence (CBI case) crumbles, the superstructure of the ED case must necessarily fall.

The anti-money laundering agency, in its petition filed on March 7, pointed to several paragraphs of the order, stating that the court's observations against it were "adverse, sweeping and unwarranted" because the ED was not a party to the deliberations and only the merits of the CBI probe were under consideration.

If such sweeping, unguided, bald observations are permitted to stand, which have been passed behind the back of the Enforcement Directorate based on pure conjectures, without anchoring itself on any material or evidence gathered by the ED... grave and irreparable prejudice would be caused to the public at large as well as the petitioner (ED), the agency said.

The ED stated that it was not a party to the CBI proceedings in any capacity and was not allowed to be heard before the adverse observations were recorded, thereby "flagrantly violating the fundamental principles of natural justice and judicial decorum." Therefore, the ED said, the paragraphs concerning the investigation, conducted independently by the agency under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), deserve to be "expunged" and "deleted" as they amount to a clear case of judicial overreach.

It noted that the trial court's observations "violate" all settled canons of considerations of justice, fair play and restraint by making observations against an authority (ED) who was not before the court.

The agency also mentioned various judgments given by the Supreme Court, underlining that the PMLA case can proceed independently of the trial in the scheduled offence and that money laundering was an independent crime.

The ED filed a total of nine chargesheets in the case against 40 accused, including Kejriwal, former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and others whom the agency also arrested. PTI NES MPL MPL