The Supreme Court bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma held that the expression “as soon as may be” in Section 19 of the PMLA can be read to mean “as early as possible” or “within a reasonably convenient” period of time.
Pertinently, the Court added that a “reasonably convenient” or reasonably requisite time to inform the arrested person about the grounds of his arrest would be within twenty-four hours of the arrest.
“The expression ‘as soon as may be’ contained in Section 19 of PMLA is required to be construed as- ‘as early as possible without avoidable delay’ or ‘within reasonably convenient’ or ‘reasonably requisite’ period of time. Since by way of safeguard a duty is cast upon the concerned officer to forward a copy of the order along with the material in his possession to the Adjudicating Authority immediately after the arrest of the person, and to take the person arrested to the concerned court within 24 hours of the arrest, in our opinion, the reasonably convenient or reasonably requisite time to inform the arrestee about the grounds of his arrest would be twenty-four hours of the arrest,” the judgment said.
Source: Barandbench
