Errant ED officers should be made to suffer: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Wednesday observed that erring officers of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) who fail to act diligently should be should be made to suffer. [Arun Kumar Tripathi v. Directorate of Enforcement].A Bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan also noted that an accused in a Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) case can't be kept in custody if the order taking cognisance of the ED complaint has been quashed."Order taking cognizance has been quashed, how can accused continue to be in jail? We have serious grievance to make. It took us 5 minutes to say that order has been quashed....if the officers are not going to act (diligently)...they should suffer. This application should have been produced by ED, not (accused). ED should come clean on every matter," it observed..The Court made these observations while granting bail to Arun Kumar Tripathi, an Indian Telecommunications Service Officer. He was arrested by the ED on August 8, 2023 in connection with a money laundering case linked to the Chhattisgarh liquor scam.A supplementary complaint under Section 44 of the PMLA was filed, naming the appellant as an accused, after which a court took cognisance of the matter on October 5, 2023.The order taking cognisance was challenged before the High Court, which quashed the order for the reason that no sanction for prosecution was obtained. Subsequently, the ED challenged the High Court’s order before the special court..This prompted Tripathi to the move the apex court. Given that he has been in custody since August 8, 2023, and the order taking cognisance has been quashed, the Court directed the ED to produce him before the special court, which was directed to release him on bail.The special court was further instructed to grant bail under stringent conditions including the condition of surrender of passport..Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora appeared for the accused, while Additional Solicitor General SV Raju appeared for the Enforcement Directorate..[Read a live account of the hearing]