LAGATAR24 NETWORK
Ranchi, Oct 11: Senior lawyer and Congress leader P Chidambaram today argued in the Jharkhand High Court that there is no criminal case against Chief Minister Hemant Soren. “Nor has the ED registered any FIR. It is not clear whether the agency is calling the CM as a witness or as an accused. Therefore, the ED summons is not correct,” he argued.
Assistant Solicitor General of India (ASG) SV Raju, who the ED, through virtual mode, however, said that this is a case of the predicate offense. “Sections 50 and 63 of ED were challenged in the petition, which has already been decided by the Supreme Court in the case of Vijay Madanlal Chaudhary,” he stated. He sought some time to argue the case in detail which the court refused. Lawyer Amit Kumar Das also appeared on behalf of the ED.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kumar Mishra and Justice Ananda Sen, after hearing the arguments, fixed October 13 for the next hearing.
Notably, Soren, who has ignored five ED summons so far, in his petition, has stated that the summons is a clear misuse of Section 50 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act ((PMLA), 2002, which directly infringes upon his right to personal liberty enshrined in the Constitution. Section 50 empowers the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to summon an accused and record a statement. The statement is admissible as evidence in court.
Soren skipped the first summons on August 14 and sent a letter to ED asking it to withdraw the summons or he will be forced to take legal action against the agency.
But the ED again issued a summon against Soren asking him to appear before it on August 24. Soren skipped it again and sent a letter to ED saying that he had filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court challenging the summons issued to him, but he was summoned again by ED for the third time.
The Supreme Court, on September 18, asked Soren to approach the high court in this regard. The ED again summoned him on September 23 and later on October 4.
The ED is probing two major cases of money laundering in Jharkhand. The first case is related to illegal mining in Sahibganj in which the CM was questioned on November 17 last year.
While, the second case is related to an alleged land scam in the state capital in which 13 people, including IAS officer Chhavi Ranjan and two businessmen, Amit Agarwal of Kolkata and Bishnu Agarwal, who own shopping malls in Ranchi, have already been arrested.
