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Enforcement Directorate, Government of India vs. Kapil Wadhawan & Anr.

Criminal Appeal · 2023 INSC 723Decided 27 Mar 2023
Criminal Appeal Nos. 701-702 of 2020
K.M. Joseph · Hrishikesh Roy · B.V. Nagarathna

Background

Kapil Wadhawan and another accused were arrested on 14.05.2020 by the Enforcement Directorate in a money-laundering case and remanded to custody the same day. The ED filed its complaint (chargesheet) only on 13.07.2020. Whether this was within the mandatory 60-day investigation period depended on a single, disputed question: should the date of remand itself (14.05.2020) be counted as "Day 1," or excluded? The trial court excluded it and denied default bail; the Bombay High Court included it, found the chargesheet was filed a day late (on the 61st day), and granted default bail: a decision the ED challenged before the Supreme Court, and which had also created a three-judge reference due to conflicting past rulings on the point.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the date of remand must be included when counting the 60/90-day period under the first proviso to Section 167(2) CrPC, resolving years of conflicting precedent. It found that an earlier line of cases (State of M.P. v. Rustam) which excluded the remand date by borrowing from the General Clauses Act had itself ignored a binding two-judge precedent (Chaganti Satyanarayan) and was therefore "per incuriam" (decided in ignorance of binding law) and not good law, even though a later three-judge bench had mistakenly followed it. The Court reasoned that Section 167 sets no fixed "from-to" limitation period to which the General Clauses Act's exclusion rule could apply, that any ambiguity in a provision restricting personal liberty must be resolved in favour of the accused, and that including the remand date better serves the constitutional right to liberty under Articles 21 and 22. Since the ED's chargesheet was filed on the 61st day (13.07.2020), after the respondents had already applied for default bail earlier that same morning, the Court upheld the Bombay High Court's order granting default bail.

Lesson Learnt

When an accused person is in custody, the clock for the police/ED's 60-day (or 90-day, for serious offences) deadline to file a chargesheet starts running from the very day a magistrate first orders remand, not the day after, and if that deadline passes even by a single day, the accused acquires an indefeasible right to be released on bail regardless of how serious the case is.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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