Wife of arrested ED official challenges CBI detention in Bombay High Court

Mumbai: The wife of Sandeep Singh, an assistant director of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for allegedly demanding and accepting a ₹20 lakh bribe from a Mumbai jeweller, has petitioned the Bombay High Court to challenge her husband’s arrest.
Divya Singh has asked the court to declare her husband’s arrest “illegal” and to quash the 9 August remand order from a city sessions court that granted CBI custody until 14 August. Singh is currently in judicial custody.
In the petition filed through advocates Sujay Kantawala and Mithilesh Mishra, Divya Singh argued that the “cardinal ground was that the petitioner’s husband was arrested in violation of Section 35 of the Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 and was never furnished with the written grounds of arrest by CBI.” This section outlines provisions for when police may arrest without a warrant.
“The right to life and personal liberty is sacrosanct, a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 21 and 22 of the Constitution and the same has been violated by the actions of the Respondents in the petitioner’s husband’s case,” the petition stated.
The document also alleged that searches of Singh’s official-residential premises, which resulted in the seizure of his official mobile phones and laptop, were conducted at midnight on 7 August while the petitioner was alone. The search team, which allegedly included no female officials, continued until 3 am on 8 August.
The petition claimed that a review of the case’s First Information Report, written complaint, and remand application indicated that the criminal proceedings against Singh were “attended with mala-fides and maliciously instituted with an ulterior motive for wreaking vengeance on the petitioner’s husband and with a view to falsely implicate him.”
Given that all alleged offences against Singh are punishable by up to seven years’ imprisonment, the petition argued that the investigating agency was obligated to serve Singh with a notice and allow him to cooperate with the investigation. However, this notice was reportedly not served.
The petition further contended that Singh’s custody was “grossly illegal and a nullity in the eyes of the law” due to the alleged failure to provide written grounds for arrest at the time of his detention and before remanding him to police custody.
The CBI registered a case against Singh on 7 August following a complaint from a jeweller who alleged that Singh had demanded a ₹25 lakh bribe, later reduced to ₹20 lakh, to prevent the arrest of the complainant’s son in a money-laundering case under ED investigation.
According to the CBI, Singh was apprehended in a “trap” operation while allegedly accepting ₹20 lakh from an individual posing as a hawala operator’s agent in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar.
The ED has since suspended Singh and initiated steps for his repatriation to his parent cadre, the Income Tax Department. An ED official stated, “Taking immediate cognisance of the incident and following the policy of zero tolerance towards corruption, ED has initiated criminal action against Singh under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.”