MUMBAI: “Courts can judicially review the legality of arrest” to prevent its misuse, the Bombay High Court said on Monday, and granted bail to former director of Lodha Developers, Rajendra N Lodha, arrested in February by Enforcement Directorate (ED). The ED had stepped in after Mumbai Police booked and arrested him last September for alleged offences of cheating, fraud and causing a loss of over Rs 100 crore to one of India’s largest real estate developers.
There was no “supervening exigency” that arose to warrant his arrest by ED by forgoing its own earlier stand of recording his statement and confronting him with material it had, observed Justice Milind Jadhav.
The arrest by ED was in “complete violation of the mandate of section 19 of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA)” which requires the agency to justify its ‘reasons to believe’ that a person is guilty of the offences before arresting him, his senior counsel Aabad Ponda submitted before Justice Milind Jadhav as he sought quashing of the remand order. The ED, through ASG Anil Singh, said Lodha’s plea was an abuse of process and filed essentially for bail without having to go through the rigorous test meant for bail orders.
Singh said, “minor procedural lapses on the part of the Authorized Officers may not be seen with a magnifying glass by the Courts…”
Justice Jadhav, however, analysed the law and facts of the case to hold that courts can judicially examine an arrest as it is “inherent in Section 19 in view of the safeguards to prevent its misuse.”
The accused was in custody since September 2025 in the police case and a lower court had permitted ED to record his statement, which ED failed to do, argued Ponda, adding even after the arrest no statement was recorded of any witness or co-accused nor was anything incriminating seized. The HC agreed with Ponda.
