The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday urged the Bombay High Court to dismiss the habeas corpus plea filed by Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik against his arrest, and said that such a petition was not maintainable. Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh and advocate Hiten Venegaokar, counsels for the ED, told the court that Malik had been arrested following due procedure and that his remand order issued by a special PMLA court in the city appropriated valid reasons for remanding him to the ED custody and then to judicial custody.
“According to us (ED), this petition cannot stand as a habeas corpus one. He (Malik) can instead apply for bail. It is unfair to say the remand order was mechanical,” Singh said. “The finding (of the special court) is that the offence was of continuing nature and that it’s a valid arrest. Then what’s the point of going back and forth. Merely because you don’t agree with an order doesn’t make it mechanical or illegal,” he said.
In his plea filed in the high court last month challenging his arrest, Malik had claimed that such arrest and the subsequent remands were illegal and sought that as an interim relief, he be released from custody immediately.
A bench of Justices P B Varale and S M Modal will continue hearing the plea on Friday. Malik, the minority development minister and NCP’s chief spokesperson, was arrested by the ED on February 23 in a money-laundering probe linked to the activities of fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and his aides.
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