‘Make use of proclaimed offender proceedings’
New Delhi: The recent meet of all-India police chiefs in Chhattisgarh has charted out three new measures to swiftly bring fugitives to justice which includes “promptly” revoking their passport and referring eligible cases to the ED for initiating proceedings under a 2018 law that allows confiscation of all assets of the offenders.
The third plan is to “increasingly” make use of the proclaimed offender (PO) proceedings under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS).
Officials in the security establishment told PTI that a special presentation on “effective action and repatriation of fugitives” was made during the November 28-30 DG/IG police conference in Raipur that was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah apart from intelligence and security chiefs.
Officers of the central intelligence agencies, the ED and the immigration were part of this session and it was stressed that all police forces of the states and Union territories should promptly send a request to the ministry of external affairs (MEA) for revocation of the passport of the named accused so that they can be declared persona non grata in the country they have fled to, officials said.
It was underlined that the action against fugitives should be a “comprehensive” initiative which includes seeking assistance from the CBI for notifying a variety of Interpol notices against the accused like Red or Blue, they said.
The recent action by Goa Police against the Luthra brothers is an example. The state police wrote to the MEA to revoke their passports due to which the stay of Saurabh and Gaurav Luthra in that country became illegal allowing India to get their custody swiftly, the officials explained.
The co-owners of the ‘Birch by Romeo Lane’ nightclub in Goa had fled to Phuket soon after a blaze claimed 25 lives in their establishment on Saturday.
The second measure is to share the details of “eligible” fugitives with the ED so that it can initiate court proceedings under the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act (FEOA), 2018 apart from filing a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), they said.
The FEOA was brought by the Modi government to bring to justice those people who have left India to evade the clutches of law after committing fraud with a benchmark value of at least Rs 100 crore.
This law also enables the ED to provisionally attach the assets of the accused named by the law enforcement agency (state police) even before filing an application before a court to declare a person a fugitive economic offender (FEO).
Once a person is declared FEO, the ED can confiscate all their assets and restitute it to the affected party or victim like banks or investors.
Till now, the ED has moved more than 26 applications to get declared persons as FEO out of which 14 have been declared so. This includes businessmen Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi.
The DG/IG conference also mooted to enhance the use of Proclaimed Offender (PO) proceedings available to probe agencies under section 84 of the BNSS.
“Earlier, under the CrPC (section 82) proclaimed offenders could be declared in 19 offences only. In BNSS, any person absconding from legal proceedings in offences punishable with 10 years or more or life imprisonment or death sentence may be declared as proclaimed offender,” a senior officer said.
