NEW DELHI: A day after the SC pulled up a batch of petitioners for challenging the constitutional validity of certain provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), Nitish Purohit arrested for alleged involvement in the irregularities that surfaced in the Liqour policy scam, withdrew his petition for the same case.
A bench of justices Bela M Trivedi and Prashant Kumar Mishra granted permission to Purohit to withdraw his petition.
Nitish Purohit the promoter of the Giriraj hotel was arrested on claims by the ED that he was aware of the illegal operations of Anwar Dhebar and willingly assisted him in the movement of proceeds of crime to Anil Tuteja, IAS officer of the Chhattisgarh cadre and another individual.
The ED had claimed that money was illegally taken from every bottle of alcohol sold in Chhattisgarh and that there was evidence of unprecedented corruption and the laundering of Rs 2,000 crore by an alcohol syndicate run by Anwar Dhebar.
Nitish Purohit, was arrested on May 11 and is under judicial custody.
Meanwhile, the bench listed the plea by Amit Singh, who claimed that he has faced custodial torture, in the second week of August.
The apex court on Tuesday came down heavily on the petitioners and call it ‘trend of challenging the constitutional validity of laws’.
“These days there is a trend going on that various petitions filed before the top court challenging the constitutional validity of certain provisions of PMLA which has been decided finally, then seek consequential relief and bypassing other forums which are open to petitioners, it observed”.