Appellate Tribunal upholds ED’s attachment of Karti Chidambaram’s properties

PMLA Appellate Tribunal has dismissed an appeal filed by Congress MP Karti P Chidambaram, thereby upholding the attachment of his properties, including a high-value bungalow in Delhi’s upscale Jor Bagh area and several bank accounts, by the Enforcement Directorate.

The tribunal, comprising members Balesh Kumar and Rajesh Malhotra, ruled against Chidambaram, who had challenged a March 29, 2019 order that had confirmed a provisional attachment made by the federal agency in 2018.

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The core of Chidambaram’s legal argument was that the ED had filed its charge sheet on June 1, 2020—430 days after the attachment was confirmed.

His counsel contended that Section 8(3)(a) of the PMLA mandates that such an attachment can only continue during an investigation for a maximum of 365 days in the absence of pending court proceedings. Therefore, he argued, the continued attachment beyond March 28, 2020, was “bad in law” and the properties should be released.

The ED, however, successfully argued that the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent nationwide lockdown created “special and peculiar circumstances.” The agency stated that the suspension of court functions and restrictions on movement prevented it from filing the complaint within the original 365-day window.

The ED relied on the Supreme Court’s suo motu order from January 2022, which excluded the period from March 15, 2020, to February 28, 2022, for computing limitation periods for judicial and quasi-judicial proceedings.

The tribunal, in its order, agreed with the ED’s interpretation. It distinguished the case from the Supreme Court’s judgment in S. Kasi vs. State, which dealt with the right to default bail—a matter of personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution. The tribunal held that the attachment of property, falling under Article 300-A, was different and that the Supreme Court’s COVID-19 limitation orders should not be “unnecessarily narrowed.” It cited its own earlier decisions in the Rakesh Tiwari and Musaddilal Gems cases to support this view.

The attached properties include:

· A 50% share in a land and property at 115-A, Block 172, Jor Bagh, New Delhi, valued at approximately Rs. 16.05 crore.

· Six bank accounts with Indian Overseas Bank in Chennai, each containing Rs. 93,51,961.

· A seventh bank account with the same branch containing Rs. 62,34,641.

While dismissing the appeal, the tribunal also noted that the interim protection granted to Chidambaram against eviction from the Jor Bagh property would cease. However, it observed that, as per the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Vijay Madanlal Choudhary case, the ED can now take physical possession only if “exceptional reasons exist.”