New Delhi, Nov 2 (PTI) The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought the Enforcement Directorate's stand on Karnataka Congress leader DK Shivakumar's plea challenging a money laundering probe initiated against him by the agency.

A bench of justices Mukta Gupta and Anish Dayal issued a notice on the MLA's petition which also assails the constitutional validity of the inclusion of the offence pertaining to disproportionate assets under the Prevention of Corruption Act as a "scheduled act" under the Prevention of Money Laundering (PML) Act.

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The petitioner, represented by senior advocate Kapil Sibal, asserted that the Enforcement Directorate's investigation in the present instance, pursuant to a case registered in 2020, cannot be sustained as it reinvestigates the offence which it has already investigated in a previous case lodged in 2018 and filed a complaint.

Sibal argued that there can be no case for the offence of money laundering on allegations of disproportionate assets.

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"Once you have come to the conclusion that the assets are disproportionate to the known sources of income, there cannot be money laundering after that. There cannot be as a matter of law," he said.

"In the previous prosecution, they have investigated this very thing. Now that the elections are near, they have started this process before the elections and I should be arrested," Sibal said.

In the plea filed by advocates Mayank Jain, Parmatma Singh and Madhur Jain, the petitioner submitted that the second set of proceedings is a "complete abuse of process of law and malafide exercise of powers" and also violates the constitutional provisions relating to double jeopardy.

"The entire aspect of disproportionate assets allegedly acquired by the petitioner when he was minister/MLA in the state of Karnataka was thoroughly investigated by the respondent in the first ECIR (Enforcement Case Information Report) and thus, the initiation of separate proceedings on the same set of facts and ingredients of the offence is impermissible in law and amounts to malafide exercise of power by the respondent," the plea said.

"The impugned ECIR/18/HIU/2020 is lodged on the same set of facts which were already investigated by the respondent in the previous ECIR/04/HIU/2018...," it said.

The commencement of fresh proceedings under the PML Act on identical facts and covering the same period is "directly infringing the rights guaranteed under the Constitution more particularly Article 20(2) and Article 21...", the plea said.

"Furthermore, the inclusion of Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act in the Schedule of PML Act is ultra vires the Constitution as the ingredients of the offence under the said provision is same as the ingredients required to attract the offence under Section 3 of the PML Act," it stated.

The plea submitted that Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act is a complete code which envisages the aspect of laundering of ill-gotten wealth by a public servant in the form of assets and there cannot be any further activity of laundering the proceeds again.

It is also alleged that the Delhi office of Enforcement Directorate has no territorial jurisdiction to conduct the present investigation and summon the petitioner who is a permanent resident of Bengaluru.

The matter would be heard next on December 15.

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