SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA
Ranchi, Oct 6: The Jharkhand High Court today fixed October 11 to hear Chief Minister Hemant Soren’s petition filed to quash the Enforcement Directorate (ED) summons in the multi-crore land scam in Ranchi.
Notably, Soren’s lawyer had filed an application in the high court to remove the last defect in the petition yesterday. Thereafter, the court, while hearing the petition, fixed the next date for hearing on October 11.
Ironically, the court made a query to Soren’s lawyer regarding a newspaper report published yesterday in a section of vernacular media which said that the case was listed for hearing on October 6 after his lawyer mentioned it for urgent hearing. Advocate General Rajiv Ranjan, who was present in the court, stated that the report was wrong and amounted to interference in the judicial proceedings. He recalled a bench of Justice S J Mukhopadhya had launched contempt proceedings in a similar case in the past.
Notably, the stamp reporting wing of the high court had pointed out five defects in Soren’s petition filed on September 23. These included repetition of some summons particulars; Certified T/C of pages 60,63 wanting; one more copy wanting; ID of petitioner missing; and missing of PO name in the petition.
Interestingly, the defects in the petition prompted the BJP to accuse the chief minister of making it intentional under a strategy to delay the hearing and buy some time.
Soren’s lawyer, however, described the defects as normal, saying every petition filed in the high court, is screened by the stamp reporting wing and listed after the defects are removed by a petitioner.
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.
Now, all eyes are on the ED bosses, who are otherwise busy investigating the liquor scam in New Delhi.
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.
