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Supreme Court on ED: The Supreme Court has strongly reprimanded the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the agency investigating cases related to money laundering in the country. The Supreme Court has also expressed concern over ED’s interrogation methods. When a person was interrogated for about 15 hours even after midnight, the Supreme Court termed it as arrogant and inhuman behavior. Justice Abhay S. Oka and Augustine George Masih said, ‘It is clear that the agency was actually forcing the person to give the statement and this is a very shocking situation.’
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The Supreme Court upheld the ED’s decision to quash the arrest of former Haryana Congress MLA Surendra Panwar in a money laundering case related to illegal mining. After about 15 hours of interrogation, ED arrested Panwar at 1:40 pm in July. However, the Punjab and Haryana Court had canceled his arrest in September. After this the agency filed a petition in the Supreme Court against this order.
ED argued
According to reports, lawyer Zoheb Hussain, appearing for the ED, said, ‘The High Court has wrongly written in its order that Panwar was interrogated continuously for 14 hours and 40 minutes. He was given a dinner break during interrogation. The agency aims to improve the process by ensuring that people are not questioned early in the morning. Rejecting the ED’s argument, the bench asked, ‘How can an agency torture a person by interrogating him for so long without stopping?’