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.