NEW DELHI: Observing that Enforcement Directorate‘s attitude should not be to keep an accused in custody, Supreme Court Wednesday granted bail to former bureaucrat Arun Kumar Tripathi despite stiff opposition from the agency, which said “crooks” who were damaging the country should not be protected.
A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan expressed disapproval over ED opposing the bail when the order of the trial court taking cognisance of the offence of money laundering had already been quashed by the high court. It said PMLA was being misused like dowry harassment provisions of IPC Section 498A. ED had arrested Tripathi, an Indian Telecommunications Service officer, on Aug 8, 2024 in a money laundering case connected with the Chhattisgarh liquor scam.
Can’t interpret law in this manner to protect crooks, ED argues in SC
Strongly opposing the bail on behalf of ED, additional solicitor general S V Raju said, “Crooks cannot get away on technical grounds. This is a serious case. Senior bureaucrats are fleecing the country. They are milking the economy and taking money to Dubai and Netherlands. HC did not pass the order on the ground that there was no offence but on a technical ground. Interpretation of law should not be done in such a way to protect crooks.”
The bench, however, did not agree. “The concept of PMLA cannot be to ensure that a person should remain in jail. I tell you frankly, looking at several cases… See what happened in 498A cases, if this is the approach of ED, it is very, very serious,” the bench told Raju.
As the court further raised questions on ED’s approach of not taking sanction from the authority concerned despite knowing that it was required, Raju said it could not be said to be the agency’s approach but that of an individual officer. Trying to dispel the impression that ED wanted to keep the accused in jail, Raju said HC’s order did not mean that there was no offence and that the case against Tripathi had been closed. He told the court that sanction had now been taken.
The bench, however, said it could not allow ED to act like this and granted bail to the accused, but asked the trial court to put stringent conditions. It allowed the agency to seek cancellation of bail in case Tripathi did not cooperate in trial proceedings.