Virbhadra’s wife plea against PMLA clause rejected

NEWDELHI: The Delhi high court on Thursday upheld the validity of a money laundering law provision while rejecting 19 pleas, including that of former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh’s wife Pratibha Singh, challenging its constitutional validity.

The clause in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) empowers the enforcement directorate (ED) to provisionally attach the properties bought from proceeds of crime.

Besides Virbhadra’s wife, others who had challenged the PMLA provision include their daughter Aprajita Singh, sand mining baron and former Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanams board member J Sekar Reddy and his business associates S Ramachandran and K Rethinam. The accused had challenged the constitutional validity of section 5(1) second provision, which deals with the power of an officer not below the rank of deputy director in the ED to provisionally attach a person’s property suspected to be brought from proceeds of crime, if he has “reasons to believe” that not doing so could frustrate the PMLA proceedings.

A bench of justices S Muralidhar and I S Mehta, in its 48-page judgement, said, “The second provision to Section 5(1) PMLA is not violative of Article 14 of the Constitution and the challenge in that regard in these petitions is hereby negatived.” The court disagreed with the submission of the counsel for the Centre and the ED that there was no mandatory requirement to communicate to the notice the ‘reasons to believe’ (reasons for such belief).

While upholding the validity of the provision of PMLA, the court said the ED will have to communicate the ‘reasons to believe’ at every stage to the person to whom an attachment notice was being issued under the Act.