Power to arrest is proportional to its checks, balances: Delhi court to ED

A Delhi court has pulled up the Enforcement Directorate (ED) while granting bail to an accused in a money laundering case and said that the power to arrest must be directly proportional to its checks and balances coupled with unambiguous regulations.

Granting bail to Mangelal Sunil Agarwal, Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Dheeraj Mor noted that in a "very unpleasant situation", while the previous investigating officer had cited him as a witness, the next IO chose to arrest him based on the same evidence available on record.

"The hallmark of investigation is its objectivity. Subjective interpretation of IO must be deprecated as it would make a supposed objective investigation dependent upon his uncontrolled whims and fancies, who has been conferred extreme power of arrest that leads to curtailing liberty of an individual," the judge said in the order passed on August 31.

"In these circumstances, it is apparent that one of the lOs was/is wrong and either acted upon the considerations