Case Law Details
Roop Bansal Vs Union of India (Punjab and Haryana High Court)
Punjab and Haryana High Court held that non-conveying of grounds of arrest in writing is not sufficient compliance of the provisions of Section 19 of the PMLA and Article 22 of the Constitution of India. Accordingly, arrest of the present petitioner illegal and cannot be sustained.
Facts- FIRs were registered from 2018 to 2020 with different law enforcement agencies namely Haryana Police, Delhi Police and Delhi EOW, u/s. 120B, 420, 467, 471 IPC against M/s IREO Private Limited and others. These FIRs were registered at the instance of allottees of residential projects developed by the IREO Group. Since the offences under IPC are scheduled offences (as defined u/s. 2(1)(y) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002), the Enforcement Directorate recorded an Enforcement Case Information Report against one Lalit Goyal, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of M/s IREO Private Limited and others with a view to investigate the offence of Money Laundering as defined u/s. 3 and punishable u/s. 4 of PMLA.
Conclusion- However, as noticed above, in so far as Pankaj Bansal and the present petitioner are concerned, both had signed the grounds of arrest apart from two other witnesses but admittedly, the grounds of arrest had not been supplied to them in writing. This would, therefore, not be sufficient compliance of the provisions of Section 19 of the PMLA and Article 22 of the Constitution of India in view of the ratio laid down by the Hon’ble Apex Court in Pankaj Bansal Versus Union of India and others’s case.
No doubt, the Hon’ble Apex Court held that the grounds of arrest would “henceforth” be furnished in writing to the accused but at the same time, it declared the arrest and the consequential remand of Pankaj Bansal and Basant Bansal to be illegal. Had the intention been to make the condition only prospective, the Hon’ble Apex Court would not have declared the arrest of Pankaj Bansal and Basant Bansal to be illegal.
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