The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed an appeal by Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee and his wife Rujira to quash the Enforcement Directorate’s summons to them on September 10, 2021, to appear before ED officers in Delhi in a money laundering case.

The court upheld the sweeping powers enjoyed by the ED under Section 50 of the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act-2002) to summon any person for inquiry and other purposes.

A bench of Justice Bela M. Trivedi and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma has said any person so summoned is bound to respond irrespective of the fact whether it is a man or woman, unlike Section 160 of CrPC.

According to Section 160 CrPC, “no male person (under the age of fifteen years or above the age of sixty-five years or a woman or a mentally or physically disabled person) shall be required to attend at any place other than the place in which such male person or woman resides”.

The bench passed the ruling while dismissing the appeal filed by the couple challenging the ED’s direction to them to appear at its office in Delhi although the central agency has a branch in Calcutta, too.

“Section 50 enables the authorized Authority to issue summon to any person whose attendance he considers necessary for giving evidence or to produce any records during the course of the proceedings under the Act, and that the persons so summoned is bound to attend in person or through authorized agent, and to state truth upon the subject concerning which he is being examined or is expected to make statement and produce documents as may be required by virtue of subsection (3) of Section 50,” said the judgment authored by Justice
Bela Trivedi.

“The summons can be issued even to witnesses in the inquiry so conducted by the authorized officers…. We therefore do not find any illegality in the summons issued by the respondent-ED summoning the Appellants to its Office at Delhi...,” read
the verdict.