Pankaj Bansal case: Supreme Court dismisses plea to relook judgment

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has declined a plea to reconsider its recent judgment on prospective application of the Pankaj Bansal case ruling, which had mandated the Enforcement Directorate to provide grounds of arrest to the accused in writing.

A bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma dismissed a review petition filed by Ram Kishore Arora, founder of real estate company Supertech.

The petitioner sought review of the December 15, 2023 judgment.

"We have carefully gone through the said judgment and the review petition. In our opinion, no case for review is made out. Consequently, the review petition is dismissed," the bench said in its short order on January 31, 2024.

The court also rejected an application filed by Arora seeking listing of the review petition in open court.

In its December 15, 2023 judgment, the bench had dismissed Arora's petition to apply the Bansal judgement retrospectively to declare his arrest by the ED as illegal.

The court had then also declared that furnishing of grounds on arrest can be done within the reasonably convenient or reasonably requisite time, that is, 24-hour of the arrest.

The court had then also said a three-judge bench in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary case (2022) had upheld the constitutional validity of Section 19 (power of arrest) of Prevention of Money Laundering Act on the touchstone of Article 22(1) (a person is to be informed about the grounds of arrest) of the Constitution.