Power to arrest must be directly proportional to its checks and balances: Delhi court to ED
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 extraneous to law for the reasons to be ascertained or he was incompetent to comprehend the facts of the case in proper perspective.
«Both the situations are perilous as it may allow an accused getting (away) scot-free or result in unlawful curtailment of liberty of an individual thereby impinging his cherished fundamental right of liberty,» the order stated.
The judge noted that the court had in November 2022 opted not to summon Agarwal as it did not find the evidence collected on record against him to be sufficient to consider him an accused.
«It appears that the IO, while arresting the applicant on the
