Former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on February 1 urged the Supreme Court to hear his plea against his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
Appearing before a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, senior advocates Kapil Sibal and A.M. Singhvi said such arrests of sitting Chief Ministers “affect the polity of the country”.
Chief Justice Chandrachud agreed to consider listing the case before an appropriate Bench on February 2.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta informed the court that Mr. Hemant Soren had already moved the Jharkhand High Court. The hearing was already scheduled on February 1.
Mr. Sibal mentioned that the case of arrest of Mr. Hemant Soren again highlighted the misuse of powers by the ED owing to the ambiguity about the actual intent of Section 19 (procedure for arrest) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Section 19 only said the agency need to “inform” the accused about the grounds of arrest.
A judgment by a Division Bench of the Supreme Court had recently held that ED needs to provide the accused with a written copy of his grounds of arrest only within a “reasonable period”, i.e., 24 hours of arrest.
This verdict had come amidst debate that non-communication of the grounds of arrest was a violation of Article 22(1) of the Constitution. The Article upholds the fundamental right of any person who is in custody to be informed as to why he has been arrested.
A Special Bench had been reviewing a Supreme Court judgment of 2022, which upheld core PMLA amendments. The petitioners in the review had argued that these amendments had bestowed unbridled powers to arrest, summon, raid persons.
A seven-judge Bench of the top court has also been constituted to examine the introduction of these amendments into the PMLA through the Money Bill route, by circumventing the Rajya Sabha, in violation of Article 110 of the Constitution.
The ED on January 31 arrested Mr. Hemant Soren in a land scam case soon after he resigned as Jharkhand Chief Minister. The resignation came after the ED officials questioned him for more than seven hours at his official residence in Ranchi.
Senior Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader and Transport Minister Champai Soren was elected leader of the Legislature Party soon after Mr. Hemant Soren’s resignation.
Mr. Hemant Soren on January 31 lodged an FIR against the ED officials at the SC/ST police station in Ranchi. In the FIR, the JMM leader described himself as a member of the Scheduled Tribe, stressing that the search on his New Delhi premises was to harass and malign his name and his entire community.
A team of ED officials visited Mr. Hemant Soren’s Delhi residence at Shanti Niketan on January 29 for questioning. However, he was not found at his residence and remained traceless for 32 hours before he was spotted in Ranchi on January 30.
On January 20, the ED grilled him for over eight hours at his official residence and recorded his statement, after he skipped eight summons by the agency.
The case pertains to alleged purchase and sale of tribal land by forging documents between 2020 and 2022.
