Kerala High Court resumes hearing of Bail Application of M Sivasankar, Former Principal Secretary of Kerala Chief Minister

Sivasankar is presently in ED's custody for alleged involvement in the Kerala Gold Smuggling case. He is also being investigated by the NIA and Customs Department.
Senior Advocate Jaideep Gupta is arguing for Sivasankar.

He denies ED's allegations that Sivasankar contacted customs officials to clear the baggage alleged to be containing smuggled gold.
Gupta claims statement made by co-accused Swapna Suresh about Sivasankar's involvement are not credible as the same were made after her arrest.
Gupta points out that the correspondence between Sivasankar and Swapna does not disclose any knowledge on the latter's part.

He also tells Court that all of Swapna's statements categorically denied his client's involvement in gold smuggling, until before her arrest.
Gupta says the authority has submitted before Special Court that the crime need not be identified to proceed under PMLA

"If you don't identify the crime, how do you know it is a 'Scheduled Offence' under the PMLA from which the proceeds of crime came?": Gupta
Gupta: You cannot proceed against a person on the basis of an underlying offence. What is the predicate offence?

Reads out Section 3 of PMLA:

"There has to be a predicate offence from which proceeds of crime arise, that money needs to be touched by the accused to be prosecuted"
Gupta points out that in this case the predicate offence is not defined. The allegations have been changed from Gold smuggling to involvement in LIFE Mission case.

https://t.co/sDkgKRDwp8
Gupta: First they said proceeds of crime are from gold smuggling. Now they say these are kickbacks from Life Mission contract.

What is the predicate offence? PMLA is not applicable here: Gupta
Where are the proceeds of crime? My client has not received any money, the offence under PMLA is not complete: Gupta

The Project was a private contract, how are they saying that a government servant received kickbacks from it?: Gupta
LIFE Mission project had its own CEO. He was a senior IAS Officer. My client could not have been involved unless they say that the entire Government was under his control. But there is no material to show the same: Gupta
The contract was awarded after a public tender; everything is in public domain; no one can tamper with this information; there are no reasonable grounds to hold my client responsible for anything: Gupta
Gupta is now making submissions on the provision of Bail under Section 45 of PMLA.

Read S. 45 here: https://t.co/Y9emmHQIfa
(This Section was amended in 2018.)
Under S. 45 Public Prosecutor has to be given an opportunity to oppose Bail.

Gupta refers to SC's verdict in Nikesh Tarachand Shah v. UoI where it was held that S. 45 is manifestly arbitrary and contravenes Art 14.

Gupta submits that 2018 amendment has not removed the problem.
Gupta reads out the following excerpt from the Nikesh Tarachand case and submits that many arbitrary conditions pointed out in the Judgment still persist even after the amendment:
Gupta now refers to the second P. Chidambaram Judgment passed by the SC on Dec 4, 2019

Read here:
https://t.co/p8ykH5Z56P
He points out that in cases pertaining to economic offences it has been held that special circumstances must be shown to release the accused on Bail. However in this latest judgment on PMLA, it was held:
Gupta quotes from the Judgment: "...even if allegation is one of grave economic offence, it is not a rule that bail should be denied in every case since there is no such bar created in the relevant enactment passed by the legislature nor does the bail jurisprudence provides so."
Gupta points out that correspondence between Swapna & Sivasankar does not disclose anything suspicious.

Says that they are social acquaintances & merely because Sivasankar sought accommodation for Swapna, Respondents are making an impression that it was to keep proceeds of crime
Gupta reads out a Whatsapp Chat between Sivasankar and one Venugopal. The chat is about availability of a flat.

Gupta: If this is to be read without any external allegations in mind, there is nothing suspicious about it. They are trying to create impressions.
Earlier Gupta had claimed that merely because Sivasankar told Swapna about a job vacancy in PwC for its Space Park Project with Kerala govt. would not mean that there is anything suspicious.

https://t.co/lWadiouGKm
It must be seen that they are socially familiar & this is natural behavior: Gupta tells Kerala HC
Gupta concludes.

Submissions on behalf of ED are likely to be made by ASG Raju on December 18.

Hearing concludes for the day.

More from Live Law

More from Law

We need to talk about the 'expert' witness statement evidence led by Ms Bell in her successful case before the Tavistock. THREAD

You can see who gave evidence in her support from these extracts from the Tavistock's Skeleton Argument.


Helpful for you to bear in mind that her solicitor was a man called Paul Conrathe, who has a long association with the religious right in the US (I have talked about him a number of times but this is as good a starting point as any).


I am not going to address here other criticisms that might be made of the form in which that evidence was given or the timing of its service before the court. I am just going to address, in alphabetical order, the individuals whose evidence Mr Conrathe led on Ms Bell's behalf.

The first witness, alphabetically, was Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford, Michael Biggs.

Mr Biggs was exposed for posting transphobic statements online under a fake twitter handle: @MrHenryWimbush according to this report.
1/n How come we still have academics sustaining narratives of #obesity rather than of how real people find value & meaning in everyday lives? Revisit @whatsthepont on @tobyjlowe / @snowded & accept criticising "neoliberal" does not make things

New out 🤯 A review which says lots about the academic context in which it was written - with its embedded behaviorist fixations on just implementing *better* - with complete disregard for the unintended consequences of treating "agency" as a dirty word

In all #becausehuman fields, we see justifiable professional kick-back at reductionist agendas driven by a focus on #obesity & nonsensical CMO guidance of 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per day for healthy growth and development


What's fundamentally missing is not just a respect for complexity. It's respect for Homo-Narrans - for the ordinary, everyday story-telling folk all around us whose aspirations & dispositions provide the context in which we find meaning, purpose & value

We don't need spurious arguments against initiatives... but let's consider ethics & unintended consequences - on which, see @snowded (especially around epistemic justice) #becausehuman
https://t.co/gu97xDEamB
https://t.co/E1GzCdCfLA
https://t.co/bKowDAgARQ
https://t.co/evzYMBPwvZ

You May Also Like

"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".