Court cancels ED's order to freeze Amnesty's financial assets

Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court invalidated an Enforcement Directorate's order in 2018 that froze the bank accounts of Amnesty International India Pvt Ld, PTI reported.

In its February 24 order, the single-judge bench of Justice KS Hemalekha allowed the petition filed by the organization in 2018 and quashed the notices.

The court said in its judgement, "On perusal of the provisions of Section 132(8A) of the Act, it is evident that order under Sub-Section (3) of Section 132 of the Income Tax Act would not be in force beyond sixty days from the date of the order. In light of the provisions of Section 132(8A), the impugned notices dated 25.10.2018 have lost their efficacy by efflux of time as the period of sixty days has expired."

But the court also said that all contentions are left open to be pushed before the appropriate authority as per the law.

In its petition, Amnesty called itself a company "engaged in the business of rendering, research (primary and secondary) and consultancy services regarding human rights". The October-25-2018 petition said that a search and seizure was conducted on the company's premises without notice, and many documents, agreements and mobile phones were confiscated.

A government order followed, freezing the bank accounts of Amnesty in HDFC Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank, that too without notice. The same was challenged in the petition.

When Amnesty's advocate pointed to the Greenpeace India Society vs Union of India case in which a similar issue was decided, the HC accepted the contention.

Greenpeace's financial assets were frozen by order of the Ministry of Home Affairs following a bank transfer from another NGO located in the Netherlands. The NGO approached the court and sought to cancel the freezing order. The HC had held that the ministry's arguments were not satisfactory and ordered to unfreeze the NGO's assets.