Section 19

The Supreme Court granted bail to Sanjay Sureka, accused in the Enforcement Directorate's money-laundering case arising from the Concast Steel and Power insolvency. It rejected his plea that a five-day delay in forwarding the arrest order and material to the Adjudicating Authority under Section 19(2) of the PMLA vitiated the arrest, but held that 20 months' custody, completed investigation against him and a trial unlikely to end soon outweighed the Section 45 twin conditions (paras 10-13).

The Supreme Court held that courts can judicially review an arrest under Section 19(1) of the PMLA, and that the 'reasons to believe' must be supplied to the arrestee and must weigh exonerating material too, but declined to quash Arvind Kejriwal's arrest on that limited review. It referred to a larger Bench whether the 'need and necessity to arrest' is a separate ground of challenge, and released him on interim bail (paras 21, 36, 55, 65, 84-85).

The Supreme Court held that a person arrested under the UAPA, or for any other offence, has a fundamental and statutory right to receive the grounds of arrest in writing, applying Pankaj Bansal to Section 43B(1) of the UAPA. As Prabir Purkayastha was remanded at 6:00 a.m. before written grounds reached him or his lawyer, his arrest and remand were declared invalid and he was ordered released on bail bonds (paras 20, 50-53).

Hearing Arvind Kejriwal's challenge to his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate, the Supreme Court released the Delhi Chief Minister on interim bail till 1 June 2024 because the 18th Lok Sabha elections were under way. The power to grant regular bail includes interim bail, and weighing his particular circumstances, with no conviction, no criminal antecedents and the legality of his arrest pending, gave politicians no special privilege (paras 7, 8, 10, 15, 17-18).

The Supreme Court held that the Enforcement Directorate must, from now on, give every person arrested under Section 19 of the PMLA a written copy of the grounds of arrest, as a matter of course and without exception. Reading the grounds aloud is not enough under Article 22(1). Finding the arrests of a father and son made in haste and without bona fides, it set aside the arrests, the remand orders and the High Court's orders (paras 22, 35-36).

The Supreme Court held that once a person arrested under Section 19 of the PMLA is remanded by a Magistrate, a writ of habeas corpus does not lie. The Enforcement Directorate can seek custody under Section 167(2) CrPC, and the 15 days of such custody may be spread over the whole 60- or 90-day investigation. It referred Anupam J. Kulkarni to a larger Bench (paras 88-91).