‘Unprecedented and shocking’: ED tells Supreme Court how Mamata Banerjee ‘hijacked’ I-PAC search to vanish evidence

ED allegation on West Bengal government

• Appearing for the ED, advocate M K Maroria submitted that while the teams of ED were conducting authorized searches at two locations in Kolkata, the residential premises of Sh. Pratik Jain and the office of I-PAC, the CM, accompanied by senior police functionaries, trespassed into the premises.
• He further argued that they hijacked the premises, forcefully took away/forcibly removed/stole/concealed several items from the premises, which included critical incriminating evidence, and threatened and panch witnesses into not recording the proceedings in the panchname accurately.
• He claimed that instead of assisting the central agency as mandated by Section 54 (certain officers to assist in inquiry, etc.) of the PMLA, the police allowed the CM of the state and, in fact, escorted her into the premises where an active search was going on and forcibly retrieved incriminating material.
• The conduct of the police officials themselves clearly demonstrates that the justification that they were investigating the possibility of armed individuals impersonating central agency officials is a mere camouflage.
• If the police were genuinely carrying out such an exercise, it would have called for the identification of the persons searching and taken steps to verify the same.
• What the police in fact did was intentionally aid and assist the highest functionary of the state government to forcibly enter into a premise where an active statutory search was ongoing and commit theft of incriminating material.
• A total of 6 premises were searched in West Bengal on January 8, barring two premises at 7, Loudon Street and Sector 5 Bidhannagar, Kolkata; the police did not visit or verify any of the other four premises.
• There was no doubt in their mind that the search action was actually being conducted by ED officers.
• Had they had any doubt about the genuineness of the ED officers, they should have visited the other four premises as well, which is not the case.
• This clearly shows that they were convinced about the genuineness of ED action and yet proceeded to create unwanted hurdles by repeated interferences and thereafter registration of multiple FIRs to overawe and intimidate the officers of ED.

State’s actions violated personal liberty of ED officers’

• In a case like the present one, where the offence that is being investigated by the ED is of alleged laundering of proceeds of illegal mining, the victim is the public as a whole, since natural resources are public assets owned by the public as a whole.
• The victim in the present case is the general public, and the general public, in the capacity of a victim, has the fundamental right to a fair investigation into the offence in accordance with the law.
• When an official enters a premise under the authority of law, he is, as an individual, exercising his right to personal liberty guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution.

Demand for Independent CBI probe

• The ED sought direction to register an FIR and have the case investigated by the CBI as the allegations are against the senior-most functionaries of the State Government and the state police.
• The agency pointed out that the local police have registered multiple “false FIRs” against ED officials to “overawe and intimidate” them.
• The FIRs registered by the local police on the same incident also deserve to be transferred to the CBI for a free and fair investigation.
• The FIRs are cross-cases/cross-allegations by the parties who themselves have committed the offences, and deserve to be investigated in a holistic, comprehensive, and coordinated manner by the same agency.

Background

• The case centers on an investigation into illegal coal mining, involving approximately Rs 20 crore in proceeds of crime allegedly channeled through inter-state hawala networks and the operational framework of I-PAC.
• The background of the current litigation is rooted in statutory searches conducted by the ED on January 8, under Section 17 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
• The ED plea seeking a probe into the alleged obstruction of its search operations on political consultancy firm I-PAC and the residence of its founder, Pratik Jain, in Kolkata by CM Mamata Banerjee and others.
• The searches were targeted at two primary locations.
• First was the residential premises of Pratik Jain, co-founder and director of I-PAC, and the second was the office premises of I-PAC in Bidhannagar, Kolkata.
• The ED filed the common rejoinder, opposing the counter-affidavits filed by the state of West Bengal.