The Supreme Court on Monday declined to entertain former Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel’s plea challenging the constitutional validity of a key provision of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) that empowers the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to file supplementary chargesheets in money laundering cases.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi refused to examine Section 44 of the PMLA, observing that the “devil is not in the law but in the abuse” of its provisions, and that no embargo could be placed on gathering additional evidence in the “pursuit of truth.”
“The amendment in the new code carried over to the BNSS, the requirement of judicial oversight is coming because Section 173(8) CrPC was brought to ensure that investigation concludes in a final report or police report… The difficulty is in the abuse. This is the abuse which has to be seen,” Justice Bagchi remarked.
The bench told senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Baghel, that filing supplementary complaints was not per se illegal and could even work in favour of an accused by bringing exonerating material to light. “Why can’t a complaint be further investigated to find out whether the accused is innocent?” the court asked.
The judges stressed that investigation is always with respect to an offence, not a particular individual, and that the law merely “recognises a residual power” in investigating agencies to uncover facts that serve the ends of justice. “Truth is the only pursuit of the investigator, a prosecutor and finally a judge… Can there be any embargo to bring out material to establish the truth?” the bench observed.
Sibal, however, contended that the ED’s repeated filing of subsequent complaints was delaying trials nationwide. He alleged that the agency would arrest a few accused initially, conduct further investigation, record statements under Section 50 of the PMLA, and then add more accused, stalling proceedings.
While declining Baghel’s challenge to the provision, the court granted him liberty to approach the high court if he believed ED officials were acting contrary to the Supreme Court’s 2022 PMLA judgment.
The case comes amid multiple ED and CBI investigations into alleged scams in Chhattisgarh during Baghel’s tenure, including the liquor scam, coal scam, Mahadev betting app case, rice mill irregularities, and DMF fund misuse. In July, Baghel’s son Chaitanya was arrested in connection with the alleged liquor scam.
On August 4, the apex court had criticised the trend of affluent litigants directly approaching it in criminal matters, advising Baghel and his son to first seek remedies before the high court.
