Opinion D Sivanandhan writes: The powerful and ubiquitous ED

Today, these once high-profile police forces have become a pale shadow of themselves and central agencies have taken over the investigation of sensational cases.

In the past few years, there has been a significant shift in the way cases, especially the high-profile ones, are being investigated across the country. At the drop of a hat, cases are taken away from the state and city police and handed over to central agencies. There have been many such cases, including the suicide case of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, the Antilia case, among others. Now, only the Enforcement Directorate (ED), National Investigation Agency (NIA), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), are in the limelight.

One agency which has become especially busy in the past few years is the ED. Formed in 1956, the ED became a prime agency following enactment of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in 2002, implemented from July 1, 2005.

Even the Supreme Court (SC), last week, acknowledged the ED’s sweeping powers under the PMLA. These include starting an investigation against anyone without complaint or application. An ED officer does not even have to file a First Information Report (FIR).

The FIR is a mandatory provision under the Criminal Procedure Code and the Indian Penal Code. Without an FIR, an investigating officer does not have authority to proceed with an investigation. However, under the PMLA, an officer just needs to file an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) which is for internal use and need not be shared with the accused.

The PMLA gives authority to an investigating officer to arrest an accused without prior intimation, even without sharing the ECIR. An investigating officer can also issue summons without giving any specific reason. The apex court said that the stringent conditions for bail under the Act are legal and not arbitrary.

A day before the SC judgement, the government, in reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, had said that raids conducted by the ED between 2014 and 2022 had jumped 27 times as compared to the raids conducted during 2004-2014. Between 2004 and 2014 the number of ED raids was 114, which, in the period between 2014 and 2022, in a span of just eight years, increased to 3,010.

Interestingly, the ED is the only central investigative agency that does not require permission from the government or any authority to summon or prosecute politicians or government officials for inquiry into economic offences and financial crimes like money laundering.

In the past few years, the ED has made some high-profile arrests, including former Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, Former Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra Chhagan Bhujbal, Maharashtra’s former Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, Senior Nationalist Congress Party leader and former minister Nawab Malik. There is a long list of prominent leaders who have been summoned and questioned, including Congress President Sonia Gandhi. Such has been the frequency of these investigations, summons and questioning that several news channels have decided to keep their media crew permanently parked outside the offices of these agencies in Delhi and Mumbai.

Similarly, the NIA, CBI, NCB, and other central investigative agencies have also been involved in investigating high-profile cases, like the Aryan Khan drug case and the drug nexus investigation in the Sushant Singh Rajput case by the NCB. Investigations in the Antilia case by the NIA have seen the arrest of a retired encounter specialist of Mumbai Police and an assistant police inspector. The CBI has taken over all five cases registered by the Maharashtra police against an officer of the rank of Director General of Police, who retired under suspension recently.

During the same time as the ED, NIA, CBI, NCB, and others rose to fame, the once famed city and state police have suffered a major loss of reputation. Mumbai Police, once considered second only to Scotland Yard, faced embarrassment in the last two years when two commissioners of police were embroiled in serious legal cases.

In fact, a police commissioner who retired last month was arrested by the ED within a week of his retirement for his alleged involvement in a major scam. The Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi government had to unceremoniously remove a sitting Mumbai Police chief from his post after he made serious allegations of corruption against the Home Minister. Never in its history has the Mumbai Police or the office of the Commissioner of Police, Mumbai, been tarnished the way it has been in the past year and a half.

Even Delhi Police continues to be embroiled in a bitter battle with the state government and issues regarding its jurisdiction. The reputation of Hyderabad Police was recently tarnished after the commission of inquiry which conducted a probe into the December 2019 encounter of four rape accused by the police, gave its report to the SC. It found that the encounter was fake, and recommended that the 10 police officers who were involved be tried on charges of murder.

Over the past few years, major amendments in key Acts have given teeth to central agencies. These agencies have the mandate for investigations across the country and are not bound by any jurisdictions. It is quite clear that the central agencies are now going to be the big brothers of investigations, while state and city police forces function in their shadows with limited powers and jurisdictions.

The writer is a former Director General of Police, Maharashtra, Police Commissioner of Mumbai, chief of the elite Mumbai Crime Branch, Joint Director of CBI and IB