ED misused power: HC; grants relief to edu society dir’s son

ED misused power: HC; grants relief to edu society dir’s son

Swati.Deshpande@timesofindia.com 26.10.2024 

Mumbai : Non-cooperation cannot be a ground for arrest, said the Bombay High Court on Friday, as it granted interim bail to Deepak Deshmukh, son of the Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Education Society’s director Appasaheb Deshmukh, in an alleged money laundering case under PMLA for which the Enforcement Directorate had arrested him last month. The HC stated that his arrest was ‘sans application of mind’ and that, prima facie, the ED “misused its power of arrest.” “Prima facie, it appears that the powers have been exercised based on the whims, caprice, or fancy of the investigating officer,” said the HC division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Prithviraj Chavan, who granted Deshmukh interim bail pending the final disposal of his bail application. 

Deshmukh is lodged in a Mumbai Central Jail. His liberty was set for a PR bond of Rs 50,000. The HC permitted his release on cash bail for six weeks, during which he would have to furnish the bond. The HC found some merit in Deshmukh’s senior counsel, Sudeep Pasbola, who argued that the arrest eight years later was a “counter blast” to a criminal petition that Deshmukh filed this year for a direction for registration of an FIR against one Jaykumar Gore and his colleagues in an alleged Covid scam. The ED case against Deshmukh, as argued by the agency’s counsel Sandesh Patil, was based on a 2016 FIR registered by the Satara police in Maharashtra. Patil said Deshmukh was arrested as he failed to cooperate with probe. The ED stated that the education society allegedly sought up to Rs 40 lakh each from students for admissions between the years 2011 and 2016, but never granted admission. The total amount collected was around Rs 69 crore, the ED alleged. The money was deposited in the Society’s account but projected as income of a hospital, the ED probe said. The ED case was also that an amount of Rs 49 lakh was transferred allegedly to Deshmukh’s  account, which the agency claimed was part of the ‘proceeds of crime’. 

The HC said, “We are, prima facie, of the opinion” that Deshmukh’s arrest and consequent orders of remands dated Sep 5, 2024 and Sep 12, 2024 “are illegal, passed in sheer ignorance of the ratio laid down by the Supreme Court in the case of Arvind Kejriwal.” The HC also said it found no reason why and how the petitioner, who has neither been named in the FIR nor has been charge-sheeted in the scheduled offence, came to be arrested after eight years.