ED not bound to share ECIR, can't claim Miranda rights here: Patna HC

NEW DELHI: Even as challenges to several provisions of PMLA are pending review before a three-judge bench of Supreme Court, the Patna high court on Monday reiterated the powers conferred on Enforcement Directorate under the Act, and said the central agency was not bound to share ECIR (enforcement case information report) with an accused as it was not a statutory document and neither was it equivalent to an FIR registered by the police reports Pradeep Thakur.

While dismissing a writ petition seeking to quash an ECIR registered by ED, Justice Arun Kumar Jha of Patna HC said, "If ECIR is an internal document of the department, no question arises of quashing the same as the said document is akin to a private document created for initiation of a proceeding, and it may be so that no proceeding might be initiated pursuant to the said document and the proceeding may even be dropped. Therefore, a person, as a matter of right, cannot claim quashing of the ECIR."

The court said that unless the predicate offence itself was quashed, ECIR proceedings would ordinarily survive. The HC rejected the importation of 'Miranda Rights' of the US into PMLA and accepted ED's submission that Miranda warnings had no legal force in India and they could not be grafted into Section 50, adding that Indian statutory safeguards were sufficient.

Any protection under self-incrimination is not allowed under PMLA. "Miranda Rights have no legal force in the Indian legal system as our system has incorporated these rights by way of various statutory provisions. In absence of incorporation of these principles under the PMLA, these rights could not be granted in Section 50 of the PMLA," the ED said.

Miranda Rights are legal protections in the US that require police to inform suspects of their constitutional rights before custodial interrogation.