ED has to act lawfully, not like crooks: Supreme Court

Justice Bhuyan said, “I had observed in one court proceedings and it has come true in the statement made by the minister in the floor of the Parliament, you have registered about 5,000- plus ECIRs, conviction is less than 10% from 2015 to 2025. Therefore we are insisting that you improve your investigation, improve your witnesses.”

“… If at the end of 5-6 years, they are put into custody, and end up in acquittal, who will pay…? …We are also equally concerned for the image of ED,” he said.

Raju said, “Wherever there are influential accused… a battery of lawyers will go on filing one application after the other…the Investigating Officer has to run around in courts…The problem is they don’t allow the trial to commence.

Raju said “everybody is concerned” about the ED’s image, adding, “there’s no acquittal”.

Echoing the agency’s concerns, Justice Kant said, “I have got details of one case where 47 applications (were filed) and the magistrate has disposed of those applications with every order running into 10-15 pages. And he said ‘I have time for no other work left’. One application I hear for two days, by the time I pass an order, another comes.”

“Somebody will have to hit them very hard. That’s the only way,” he added.

Raju said, “The situation has changed. Crooks have become very smart… tech savvy. So it will be very hazardous if we are required to give them (material) which would disclose our investigation at a very nascent stage. Of course at the time of complaint, we will give them everything, we are bound to give them everything.”

“Suppose you arrest a person and the main persons are in the British Virgin Islands or Cayman Islands, you can’t touch them. The investigation gets delayed, you can’t get material… what do we do? We are handicapped. An investigator is no match for a crook with a lot of wherewithal,” he said.

Justice Kant said, “crypto currency is going to pose a big challenge before you.” To a specific query about regulating crypto currency, Raju said, “They are trying to but sometimes it’s very difficult… When we regulate, crooks always find a way out.”

Meanwhile making his submissions in another matter before a bench presided by CJI B R Gavai, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the ED, said that the agency had so far recovered around Rs 23,000 crore laundered money and distributed it to the victims of financial crimes.

The CJI asked him, “What is the conviction rate?” The SG said that conviction rates are also very low in penal offences and added that the various ills plaguing the criminal justice system in the country was the key reason for this.

The CJI said, “even if they are not convicted you have been successful in sentencing them almost without a trial for years together.”

The SG said, “In some of the cases where the politicians were raided, where the cash was found, our (cash counting) machines stopped functioning because of the huge cash… we had to bring new machines”. He added that some narratives are being built on YouTube programmes when some big politicians are caught”. The CJI said, “We do not decide matters on narratives… I don’t see news channels. I see headlines in newspapers only in the morning for 10-15 minutes”.