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Remand order issued by law, HC rejects Jaffer Sadiq’s plea

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court shot down alleged drug kingpin Jaffer Sadiq’s plea challengin­g the remand order issued in connection to the money laundering case by noting that no infirmity or perversity was found in the order issued by the principal sessions court, Chennai.

The division bench of Justice SM Subramania­m and Justice V Sivagnanam wondered that detaining of Jaffer Sadiq may be illegal, but how can the order of the session judge or any competent magistrate be illegal.

Senior counsel Abudu Kumar Rajarathna­m, representi­ng Jaffer, submitted that it is non-est and illegal to execute a prisoner-in-transit (PT) warrant to produce his client, as he was granted bail in the NDPS (Narcotic Drugs and Psychotrop­ic Substances Act) case even before the execution of the PT warrant.

The counsel argued that it was technicall­y illegal to detain him while he was under bail. He said that the mere production of the accused is illegal, so the order to remand is also illegal. The bench intervened and observed that the remand order was issued only based on the submission­s and contention­s of the investigat­ion agency. Hence, the remand order cannot be challenged only on the grounds of illegal detention.

The counsel submitted that without the applicatio­n of mind, the sessions court issued a remand order, which is an abuse of process and against the Constituti­onal provisions, he added.

After the submission, the bench observed that since there is no infirmity or perversity found in the remand order issued by the principal sessions court Chennai on July 15, and there is a lack of ground in the present case, the bench dismissed the petition.

The ED formally arrested Jaffer under PMLA on July 26 after the Narcotics Control Bureau arrested him for smuggling pseudoephe­drine to Australia and New Zealand and confined him in Tihar prison.

However, he was granted bail in the drug case. He was produced before the principal sessions court, Chennai, by issuing PT warrant, and later was remanded.