Justice Rao said that while he might have struck down the law if he was a judge on the bench, he would not venture so far as to criticise the judges who authored the judgment.
“At the outset I should tell you that I am not critical of the judges who have written the judgment or the philosophy of the judgment. Left to me, I should be frank, I might have taken a different view. …I don’t want to go into whether it is wrong or right. Personally I might have taken a different opinion if I was writing the judgment,” he said.
The retired judge was speaking at an event organised by The Leaflet on “Life and Liberty: India at 75 years of Independence”.
The judge voiced his opinion on the judgment in response to a query on whether by upholding powers of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) the apex court had curtailed personal liberty of citizens.
The Supreme Court had, on July 27, upheld the validity of provisions of PMLA.
The verdict saw stringent bail conditions in money-laundering cases being upheld, in variance with earlier Supreme Court decisions.
Provisions relating to arrest, search, seizure, attachment, use of statements to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) as admissible evidence, and non-requirement to supply Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) were all upheld, effectively rendering the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) inapplicable in money laundering cases.
Critics have argued that these go against the basic protections afforded by Articles 20 and 21 of the Constitution.
Source: Barandbench
