Justice Bela Trivedi, one of the three judges on the Special Bench of the Supreme Court reviewing an apex court judgment of 2022 which upheld core amendments made in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), on Wednesday asked a senior Congress leader from Madhya Pradesh whether he was in the Opposition when the Act was brought in 2002.
The query from Justice Trivedi, who is part of a three-judge Bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, was addressed to senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who was arguing for Madhya Pradesh Assembly Leader of Opposition Govind Singh. Mr. Sibal submitted that the amendments made to the anti-money laundering law in 2019 had armed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) with unbridled powers of summons, arrest, raids, attachment of property and made bail nearly impossible while shifting the burden of proof of innocence onto the accused rather than the prosecution.
Mr. Sibal argued that the amendments stripped a person of his right under Article 20(3) (fundamental right against self-incrimination) of the Constitution. He said the ED could arrest a person even without informing him of the charges. This power was violative of the right to ‘due process’ enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution. Besides, Article 22 mandated that no person can be arrested without informing him or her of the grounds of the arrest, the petitioners contended.
