The Supreme Court on Tuesday permitted Bharat Rashtra Samithi legislator K. Kavitha to withdraw a writ petition filed in March last year challenging summons issued by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) to her in connection with the Delhi excise policy case.
Appearing before a Bench headed by Justice Bela M. Trivedi, Ms. Kavitha’s counsel, senior advocate Vikram Chaudhri, submitted that his client would like to withdraw the petition as she had already been arrested on March 15 and remanded to ED custody.
The plea was dismissed as withdrawn with liberty to Ms. Kavitha to pursue appropriate remedies in accordance with law.
Mr. Chaudhri said a separate petition has been filed in the Supreme Court challenging her arrest and remand.
The withdrawn petition filed on March 14, 2023, came two days before Ms. Kavitha was scheduled to appear before the ED for questioning. The legislator said she had already undergone a gruelling session on March 11, 2023.
She had argued that the ED summons was an intimidation tactic. Ms. Kavitha alleged she was compelled to produce her mobile phone and was questioned after sunset the last time. She said her personal details had also been outed. The 2023 petition said she was implicated in the case on the basis of statements extracted out of certain persons using coercion.
In September last year, the top court had agreed to examine ED’s power to summon Ms. Kavitha in light of a July 2022 judgment in the Vijay Madanlal Choudhary case. The judgment by a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court had upheld core amendments to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The amendments gave the ED virtually unbridled powers of summons, arrest, raids while making bail nearly impossible.
Ms. Kavitha’s petition had been tagged with a similar petition filed by Nalini Chidambaram in 2018 against an ED summons issued to her in the Saradha cut funds scam case.
Both petitions had raised the same legal question as to whether women could be summoned by the ED to its offices for questioning.
The batch of petitions, including the one by Ms. Kavitha, came up last on March 15, 2024 for hearing. It was, however, adjourned.
Ms. Kavitha was arrested the same day and subsequently remanded till March 23.
