Severe Obesity helps Accused get Bail in ED's PMLA Prosecution,

 The Punjab and Haryana High Court has recently granted bail to a man considering 'obesity' as a medical condition observing that its not just a symptom but is itself a disease which becomes root-cause of several other diseases.

The single-judge bench of Justice GS Gill while considering bail application of a man booked for offences under Section 4 read with Section 70 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 noted that her suffers from serious comorbidities and on account of the same his health is fast deteriorating.

 "With such co-morbodities, the response, the resistance, the resilience and the capacity of the body to fight ailments and recuperate efficaciously, decreases substantially. The jail doctor or for that matter, a civil hospital may not be fully equiped to handle a patient having multiple aiments who apart from medical treatmet may require a certain level of monitoring, care and attention which ordinarily is not available in jail. Considering the co-morbodities of the petitioner, it can safely be said that he falls in the exception of being “sick” as carved out in Section 45 of the Act, so as to be entitled tobe released on bail."

The Court also mentioned how the twin-condition of bail has been rendered violative of the Constitution by the Top Court. That the constitutional validity of provisions of Section 45 PMLA 2002, imposing the twin conditions for grant of bail, which were also there before amendment of Section 45 PMLA in 2018, was questioned before Hon'ble the Supreme Court in Nikesh Tarachand Shah Vs. Union of India & ANR., 2017 Latest Caselaw 823 SC and the Supreme Court, after holding that the prescribed twin conditions for release on bail were violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India, declared Section 45(1) of the PMLA, to that extent, to be unconstitutional. 

"Subsequently, Section 45(1) of the PMLA was amended w.e.f. 19.04.2018. whereby the words "punishable for a term of imprisonment of more than three years under Part A of the Schedule" as occurring in Section 45(1) before being declared unconstitutional by the judgment of the Supreme Court in Nikesh Tarachand Shah's case (supra) were substituted with the words "under this Act"."

 The Court also mentioned that the validity and interpretation of amended provisions later came to be examined by e Supreme Court wherein the validity of amended provisions of Section 45(1) of PMLA was upheld and thus twin conditions prescribed in Section 45(1) stood revived with amendment in 2018.

 

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(With input from news agency language)

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