Delhi High Court Flags 'Deeply Disturbing' Coverage Of PMLA Bail Hearing By Indian Express, Cautions Against Media Influence

While granting bail to five accused in a money laundering case related to alleged spurious anti-cancer drugs racket, the Delhi High Court took exception to a series of reports published by The Indian Express during the course of bail hearings.

Justice Girish Kathpalia described the publications as “deeply disturbing”, noting that the articles, published on four consecutive days on front page, appeared to not only report on the case but also anticipate and respond to queries posed by the Court to the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

The Court noted that the articles laid bare the WhatsApp chats allegedly exchanged between the accused inter se, without the slightest attempt at redaction or anonymisation.

It added that the implications of the publications were profoundly alarming and that if the said series of articles were engineered directly or indirectly at the instance of any arm of the State, with a view to influence, overawe or subtly condition the judicial mind, the same would strike at the very roots of the Rule of Law.

“Such conduct would be not just deplorable, but also amount to grave and impermissible assault on the independence of the judiciary and sanctity of the adjudicatory process. The spectre of proceedings being sought to be influenced through media use of such nature is not just unacceptable but deeply disquieting and must be unequivocally deprecated,” the Court said.

It added: “As is obvious, no court would get influenced with such write-ups while adjudicating. For, our minds across decades of work experience are attuned to be phlegm to such efforts. The purpose of above narration is to put across a word of caution so that such act is not repeated in future.”

The Court made the observations while granting bail to multiple accused- Pravez Khan, Neeraj Chauhan, Suraj Shat, Rajesh Kumar and Lovee Narula, in a case registered by the ED under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The case originated from a March 2024 FIR alleging a syndicate involved in manufacturing and selling spurious anti-cancer drugs by refilling empty vials of high-value injections such as Keytruda and Opdyta.

While finding serious gaps in ED case, the Court said that the statements of the accused in custody were are “more or less copy paste of each other with slight tweaking related to their individual roles.”

It added that each statement flowed as “smoothly as a hot knife on butter” and that it is a bit unbelievable that a person would voluntarily make such self incriminating statement to the investigating agency, unless coerced in custody.

“Such self incriminating statements when recorded under Section 50 PMLA while the maker of the statement is in custody of ED, cannot be considered voluntary statements and must be discarded,” the Court said.

It also noted that a number of persons allegedly involved in the offence were ascribed role graver than or at least similar to the role ascribed the accused, but many of them were not arrested and, rather some were not named as accused by ED.

“This selective treatment becomes significant also in the light of the legal position that the offence under Section 3 PMLA is punishable with imprisonment only up to 07 years (unless the alleged offence is specified under paragraph 2 of Part A of the Schedule) under Section 4 PMLA. It certainly is discomforting to see that regarding an offence punishable with at the most 07 years incarceration, few of the accused are arrested and even after spending more than 02 years in jail have to suffer incarceration without trial till the maximum prescribed punishment, whereas others accused of similar or graver role in the same offence are not even arrested. That too, where as regards the predicate offence of dealing in spurious cancer drugs, three of the present accused/applicants have already been granted bail while the remaining two have not even been chargesheeted, but remain in jail,” the Court said.

“…there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accused/applicants are not guilty of the offence alleged against them. As regards the second limb of Section 45 PMLA qua no likelihood of their committing any offence on bail, such likelihood has to be inferred on the basis of some cogent material, which has to be in the form of antecedents and propensities of the accused applicants, but in the present cases, no such antecedents or propensities have been alleged against them,” it added.

Title: PRAVEZ KHAN v. ED & other connected matters

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