Mumbai: Bombay HC asks Centre, ED to reply to Anil Deshmukh aide Sanjeev Palande’s quashing petition – Times of India

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Friday asked the Central government through the ministry of finance and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to file an affidavit in response to a petition filed by Sanjeev Palande, an alleged aide of former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh, for quashing of the case against him.
Palande, arrested in a money laundering case, has petitioned the HC for quashing of the case lodged against him by the ED under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Palande, 51, was working as Deshmukh’s personal secretary and was arrested on June 26 in the case by the ED. He is in judicial custody.
Palande said the allegations of ED that he had a role in the transfer of police officials have no weight as he said not the Home Department but the “the CM has control over the same on the recommendation of the Police Establishment Board”.
His petition before the HC raises a challenge to the validity of the ED case as well as certain provisions of the PMLA Act too, as contended before the HC by his counsel Shekhar Jagtap. His case is that he has been arrested on a case based on “hearsay allegations made by a disgruntled’’ police officer Param Bir Singh said.
He has also questioned the “arbitrary and unjust” practice of not supplying the copy of the ECIR to him. He denied the ED case against him and said that for a PMLA case to be investigated there needs to be ‘proceeds of crime’.
The PMLA case was registered by the ED on May 11 against Deshmukh, Palande and others.
Palande’s petition says that the Centre has failed to exercise its jurisdiction by including section 19 (power to arrest) and 50 (powers of ED over summons, production of documents and to give evidence) in the PMLA, both of which are unconstitutional and sought directions to strike them down. His petition said the case is “politically motivated’’ and is based on vague allegations His grounds for quashing the case is that the ED probe and even the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in its preliminary enquiry following the April 5 order of the Bombay high court into a complaint based on Singh’s allegations against Deshmukh find no involvement of his, “save and except bare words of a tainted ex-police officer, Sachin Vaze.”
“The statement given by Vaze, who is interestingly not mentioned in FIR or as an accused despite his admission that he had extorted the money which is apparently the “proceeds of crime” in the present ECIR, cannot be relied upon’’ as Vaze himself is in the custody of the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
Besides, his petition says, there is no trail that leads to him (Palande) as Vaze himself said that “he had given the money to the other co-accused on behalf of Anil Deshmukh purportedly.”
He said the arrested is on mere suspicion and hence unlawful.