New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday tagged with other pleas the petition filed by Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLC K Kavitha against the Enforcement Directorate (ED) summons in connection with the alleged Delhi excise policy scam.
A bench of justices Ajay Rastogi and Bela M Trivedi tagged the matter along with a similar petition by Nalini Chidambaram. The court listed the matter after three weeks and asked the parties concerned to file a note on the issue.
Kavitha, who is the daughter of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, in her plea challenging the summons issued by ED against her, said as per norms a woman cannot be summoned for questioning before ED in office and her questioning should take place at her residence.
Sr Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Kavitha, said that whether she needs to be interrogated at home or in Delhi, Court is seized of and has issued a notice in similar petitions of Nalini Chidambaram and Abhishek Banerjee.
Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, appearing for ED said that Section 160 CrPC will not apply in PMLA cases as per the Supreme Court judgement in the Vijay Madanlal Choudhary matter. Senior Advocate Sibal said that this issue was not before Vijay Madanlal Choudhary of the PMLA case. He submitted that there is no procedure under PMLA for summons.
He said that the summons issued to Kavitha is for investigation and the PMLA says if there is no procedure then Code will apply. Kavitha is being quizzed by ED in connection with a money laundering case related to Delhi excise policy irregularities matter.
In a petition filed through advocate Vandana Sehgal, Kavitha has appealed to the top court to quash the ED summons dated March 7 and 11 stating that asking her to appear before the ED office instead of her residence is contrary to the settled tenets of criminal jurisprudence and thus, wholly unsustainable in law being violative of the Proviso to Section 160 of CrPC. (with Agency inputs)
