Manisha Yadav
On 31 July 2025, the Supreme Court declares that it would first address preliminary arguments regarding the maintainability of review petitions challenging the 2022 Vijay Madanlal Choudhary v. Union of India (SSC Online SC 929) case judgement. This significant legal matter involves a three-judge Bench of Justices Surya Kant, Ujjal Bhuyan, and N.K. Singh, who is reviewing a series of petitions that contest the sweeping powers granted to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA).
The Enforcement Directorate has raised three preliminary objections, which the Court will consider:
1. Whether the review petition meets the threshold requirement of demonstrating an error apparent on the face of the record in the original judgment.
2. Whether the review petition is, in essence, an appeal as a review, and thereby subject to dismissal on that basis.
3. Whether, according to the order issued on August 25, 2022, only two specific issues—namely the supply of the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) to the accused and the constitutional validity of the reverse burden of proof under Section 24 can be examined in this review.
To facilitate the Court’s review, the petitioners raised thirteen specific questions, including:
1. Whether the Court should have first determined the constitutionality of amendments to key PMLA provisions enacted through Money Bills, and whether these amendments contradict the Constitution.
2. Whether the Court misinterpreted the conjunction “and” in Section 3 (“projecting or claiming”) as “or,”.
3. Whether money laundering as a continuing offense violates Articles 20 and 21 retroactively.
4. Whether treating the PMLA as sui generis legislation, rather than a conventional penal law, constituted a legal error.
5. Whether equating “investigation” with “inquiry” and permitting compelled testimony under Section 50 contravenes Articles 19, 20(3), and 21.
6. Whether the Court erred by determining that ED officials do not qualify as police officers.
7. Whether the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code under Section 65 should apply to PMLA cases.
8. Whether the finding that the ECIR is merely an internal document not required for disclosure to the accused violates Article 21 & fundamental principles of criminal law.
9. Whether the judgment improperly reinstated the stringent twin conditions for bail under Section 45, despite the 2018 amendment’s failure to explicitly revive them.
10. Whether Section 45 should have been deemed unconstitutional due to its twin conditions that continue to violate Articles 14, 19, and 21.
11. Whether the Court’s endorsement of Section 5’s expanded scope, permitting property attachment even in the absence of a registered scheduled offense, was legally correct.
12. Whether upholding the reverse burden of proof imposes a manifest error resulting in irreparable injustice.
13. Whether the interpretation of Explanation (i) to Section 44(1)(d), which detaches PMLA trials from the outcomes of scheduled offense trials, was legally flawed.
The Supreme Court clarified that these questions will only be considered intentionally if the review petitions are deemed maintainable.
The Court upheld a wide range of powers exercised by the Enforcement Directorate, including those related to arrest, property attachment, search and seizure under the PMLA. It ruled that ED officials are not police officers and their actions should be viewed as part of a sui generis inquiry. ED is only obligated to reveal the grounds for arrest. The bail provisions of Section 45, command that the accused show their innocence & seek to assure that they will not commit additional offences, and were upheld as constitutionally valid.
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