Supreme Court clarifies facts in money laundering cases – Firstpost

In an order that could have far-reaching consequences, the Supreme Court declared that even in money laundering cases, bail was the norm.

The Supreme Court said that the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), one of the laws under which the Enforcement Directorate (ED) prosecutes cases, do not override the legal principle that bail is the rule and jail is the exception.

In recent years, many senior personalities, such as Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders Manish Sisodia and Arvind Kejriwal, have been denied bail for long periods in money laundering cases prosecuted by the ED.

Section 45 of PMLA does not rewrite the principle of bail: SC

According to The Indian Express, a Supreme Court bench comprising BR Gavai and KV Viswanathan said that Section 45 of the PMLA, which lays down the “double test” for bail, does not circumscribe the legal principle that bail is the rule and jail is the exception.

The order was issued in connection with a money laundering case against one Prem Prakash, an alleged aide of Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren in a PMLA case.

Section 45 of the PMLA effectively shifts the burden of proving innocence to the accused, rather than making it the prosecutor’s responsibility to prove the accused’s guilt.

Earlier, Supreme Court lawyer Tushar Agarwal had told the Economic Times, “Section 45 of the PMLA prescribes two conditions for bail: first, the public prosecutor must be given ample opportunity to object to the bail and second, the accused must establish his not guilty by producing evidence.”

In the current order, the Supreme Court stated that none of this constitutes a change in the principle that a person's liberty is the rule and its deprivation the exception.

“Based on the judgment in Manish Sisodia, we have said that even in PMLA, bail is the rule and jail is the exception. All that is laid down in Section 45 are the conditions that have to be fulfilled for bail. Liberty of the individual is always the rule and deprivation by law-based procedures is the exception. The twin test does not override this principle,” the Supreme Court said, according to Bar & Bench.

According to The Express, the Supreme Court further stated that an accused's confession to an investigating officer would not normally be admitted as evidence under the PMLA.