The Karnataka High Court has quashed a notice issued by the directorate of enforcement in 2018 under the Foreign Exchange Management Act and the IT Act for the blocking of Amnesty International India Pvt Ltd's bank account. A single-judge bench of the Karnataka High Court quashed the October 26, 2018 notice for blocking Amnesty India's account as its validity was for only 60 days. Amnesty International India and Indians for Amnesty International Trust had approached the HC over the ED letter. The case was disposed of on Friday. The senior counsel for the NGO argued that the notice issued by the ED under section 37 of the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999, read with section 132 of the Income Tax Act, 1961, stipulates a validity of the notice for only 60 days. The sub-section 8A of the IT Act stipulates sixty days and there is no provision for exceeding sixty days from the date of the order, Amnesty argued in the HC. The NGO cited an order passed in February 2019 by a single-judge bench of the Karnataka HC in a plea filed by Greenpeace India Society. In the Greenpeace case in 2019, the HC ruled that the ED's notice issued under section 37 of FEMA and 132 of the IT Act lost its efficacy after the lapse of 60 days. The ruling was based on Supreme Court orders in similar matters. The ED has frozen multiple accounts of Amnesty over the last decade under FEMA and PMLA laws. The human rights NGO, Amnesty International, decided to shut its offices in India in 2020 in the wake of the freezing of its bank accounts by the Enforcement Directorate. In October 2018 Amnesty India properties in Bengaluru were searched by the ED in a case where the Amnesty International India Foundation Trust was accused of trying to dodge Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) rules, after being denied registration under FCRA by the MHA.
