The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the Constitutional validity of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) .
The Court upheld the validity of Sections 3 (definition of money laundering), 5 (attachment of property), 8(4) [taking possession of attached property), 17 (search and seizure), 18 (search of persons), 19 (powers of arrest), 24 (reverse burden of proof), 44 (offences triable by the special court), 45 (offences being cognizable and non-bailable and twin conditions for grant of bail by the court) and 50 (statements made to ED officials).
The Court also held that the supply of Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) under PMLA proceedings is not mandatory since ECIR is an internal document and cannot be equated to a First Information Report (FIR).
"ECIR cannot be equated with FIR and ECIR is an internal document of ED.
Supply of ECIR to the accused is not mandatory and only disclosure of reasons during the arrest is enough. Even the ED manual is not to be published since it is an internal document," the Court held.
No comments:
Post a Comment