The Supreme Court today pulled up the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for filing a charge sheet against Pune-based stud farm owner Hasan Ali Khan in a case of alleged money laundering without informing a high-level committee formed by the Government to monitor probe in sensitive cases.
The Apex court was also anguished that during the last hearing on May 4 when the ED placed its status report on the investigation in the blackmoney case involving Khan and others it did not make a mention of the charge sheet to be filed on May 6 before a special court in Mumbai.
“You (ED) filed the charge sheet without placing it before the committee you have constituted and we are surprised,” a Bench comprising Mr Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and Mr S.S. Nijjar said.
“We heard the matter on May 4 but there was no mention in the status report that charge-sheet was ready to be filed which was filed on May 6. You did not mention this in the status report. There was no mention of the charge-sheet.
Why it was not mentioned that the charge-sheet is to be filed?,” the Bench asked.
The Bench also queried, “Why it was not mentioned that the investigation is complete and the charge-sheet will be filed? Two days later we read in newspapers that the charge-sheet has been filed.”
It said that the status report filed on May 4 had stated that the investigation was still going on.
The Bench said it was “surprising” that the charge-sheet was not placed before the 10-member high-level committee headed by the Revenue Secretary.
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.