Delhi High Court refuses to interfere with arrest of M3M directors by ED in money laundering case

The Delhi High Court recently refused to interfere with the arrest of directors of Gurugram based realty group M3M – Basant Bansal and Pankaj Bansal – in a money laundering investigation related to a bribery case against a former judge. .Bansals were arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on June 14 and sent to five-day custody by a special court in Haryana’s Panchkula.The Bansal brothers argued that this custody amounted to illegal detention and was an effort to avoid the Delhi High Court’s orders granting them protection from coercive action in another money laundering case.The counsel appearing for Bansals further said that the High Court was not informed about the other case pending against them and that they were never served with summons..After considering the case, a vacation bench of Justice Jasmeet Singh noted that the order of remand has been passed by the competent court at Panchkula and the appropriate remedy for them is to approach the High Court of Punjab and Haryana.“Any order passed by this court once an order of remand has been passed by Panchkula Court would be improper,” the Court said.It added,“The issue whether the petitioners were served with summons on 13/06/2023 in ECIR No. 17/2023 can only be ascertained once the counter- affidavit of the respondent is placed on record. As regards informing this court on 09/06/2023 with regard to pendency of the FIR 0006/2023 dated 17.04.2023 and second ECIR being 17/2023 is concerned, the said submission would be relevant while challenging the order of remand dated 09.06.2023 passed by the Panchkula court.”.The Court then proceeded to dismiss the applications. It issued notices on the main plea and listed the case for further consideration on July 7..Bansal brothers were arrested by the Haryana Police’s Anti- Corruption Bureau (ACB) in relation to a FIR registered earlier this year against former Special Judge CBI/ED, Sudhir Parmar.It was alleged that ED had received information that Parmar was showing favouritism to the accused in the money laundering case regarding real estate firm IREO. The accused in that case included IREO owner Lalit Goel, Roop Kumar Bansal and Basant Bansal.As the ACB registered the case, the Punjab and Haryana High Court suspended Parma..Senior Advocates Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi, N Hariharan, and Mohit Mathur along with advocates Sonali Jaithley Bkshi, Jaiyesh Bakshi, Vijay Nair, Ravi Tyagi, Gaurav Mishra, Mayank Mishra, Manmilan Sidhu, Sudiksha Saini, Ankit Tyagi, Rajat Jowja, Arpit Diwvedi, Manmeet Singh Nagpal, Sawib Mukhtar Ansari, Siddharth Soni, Devna Soni and Sanjay Abbott appeared for the Bansals.Additional Solicitor General (ASG) SV Raju along with advocates Vivek Hunna and Hashain Khawjha appeared for the ED.Central government was represented through Central Government Standing Counsel (CGSC) Rakesh Kumar and Advocate Sunil..[Read Order]