The Supreme Court on Tuesday, while hearing former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren’s petition challenging his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), asked whether the validity of the arrest could be examined after the trial court had taken cognizance of the ED complaint and rejected the regular bail application.
The Vacation Bench of Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma heard the arguments for about one-and-a-half hours and listed the matter for further hearing on Wednesday.
Appearing for the petitioner, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal submitted that the subject land was 8.86 acres of tribal land, which cannot be transferred under the Chotta Nagpur Tenancy Act. He asserted that Soren has nothing to do with the land.
Sibal contended that ED’s allegation was that in 2009-10, Soren occupied the subject land forcibly. A complaint was lodged in April 2023, but between 2009-10 and April 2023, there was no complaint by anybody.
The Senior Counsel claimed that the electricity connection in the land was in the name of a person, who was cultivating the land under a registered lease from another person.
He argued that ED was not the investigating agency with respect to the settlement of the land as it was purely a civil matter.
He noted that in so far as ED’s contention that had it not intervened, Soren’s name would have been added in the land register.
He further asked as to how did ED know that Soren’s name would be added?
Representing the national agency, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) SV Raju submitted that Soren’s case was different from Arvind Kejriwal’s on many grounds.
He said Soren was arrested in January, way ahead of the declaration of elections,
The Special Court had taken cognizance of the complaint and issued a process, which meant that there was a judicial satisfaction regarding the prima facie case, he added.
The ASG noted that Soren’s regular bail application under Section 45 PMLA was rejected by the Special Court, which he has not challenged.
To grant interim bail only on the grounds of elections would open a “pandora’s box” as several other jailed politicians would also try to take advantage of such an order, he contended.
ASG Raju said that Soren was simultaneously pursuing bail while challenging the arrest, which was akin to “riding two horses at a time”. He said the Apex Court has deprecated the practice of parties resorting to parallel remedies simultaneously.
The Bench then asked Sibal whether the writ petition challenging arrest could be maintained when the special court had taken cognizance and when his regular bail application had been rejected.
Sibal replied that the allegation of land grabbing was not a scheduled offence under PMLA. Regarding a query on whether subsequent judicial orders would not give an imprimatur to the arrest, the Senior Counsel answered in the negative.
He cited the recent judgment in Prabir Purkayastha vs Union of India, which held that if the initial arrest was invalid, the subsequent remand orders would not validate it.
However, the Bench noted certain factual dissimilarities in the cases and adjourned the case for tomorrow for further hearing.
The national agency filed a prosecution complaint on June 23, 2016 in connection with the case under Section 45 of PMLA against Soren, 10 others, along with three companies.
As per ED, the case pertained to a ‘huge’ racket of illegal change of ownership of land by the mafia in Jharkhand.
ED has so far arrested more than 12 people in the case, including 2011-batch IAS officer Chhavi Ranjan, who served as Director of the State’s Social Welfare Department and Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi.
The agency recorded Soren’s statement under the PMLA on January 20 this year. He was later arrested and stepped down as Chief Minister of Jharkhand on January 31 in the wake of his arrest.
The Jharkhand High Court had rejected his plea against arrest on May 3, leading to the present petition before the Apex Court.
On May 13, the top court of the country had issued notice to ED on the plea challenging the High Court verdict.
The Supreme Court further directed the ED to file a short reply on Soren’s prayer for interim bail.