New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday (May 6) told the Enforcement Directorate (ED) not to “harass” district collectors in Tamil Nadu unnecessarily. The court was hearing a petition by some collectors over a petition concerning them not appearing before the ED in a case related to alleged sand mining.
Earlier, the bench of Justices Bela M. Trivedi and Pankaj Mithal had criticised the collectors for not appearing before the ED despite the court’s directions, LiveLaw reported. On Monday, senior advocate Kapil Sibal told the court that the collectors had appeared before the ED after that.
The ED’s advocate also agreed that they had appeared, but alleged that they did not submit the required documents. Sibal disagreed with this, saying everything demanded in the summons had been provided.
In addition, Sibal continued, while the summons was the collectors to appear at 11 am, they were made to sit till 8:30 pm. This is when the judges stepped in and told the agency not to engage in unnecessary harassment.
“You can’t do it…don’t retain them unnecessarily,” Justice Trivedi said, according to Livelaw. Justice Mithal also told the ED not to “harass” the collectors.
The ED had in 2023 issued summons to five district collectors from Tamil Nadu. They had challenged the summons in the Madras high court, and the court had stayed the summons but allowed the investigation to continue. The high court had then said that the ED was conducting a “fishing and roving” enquiry.
In February this year, the Supreme Court suspended the stay order, after which the ED issued fresh summons. The collectors responded by telling the ED that they were busy with election-related and other duties, and also that they needed more time to collecting the data pertaining to mining sought by the ED. On April 2, the Supreme court criticised the collectors for failing to appear, and said they must be physically present before the ED or strict action would be taken.
