PIL in Delhi HC seeking full black money confiscation, life imprisonment to fraudsters
Jun 21, 2022
New Delhi [India], June 21 : A Public Internet Litigation (PIL) has been moved in Delhi High Court on Tuesday seeking direction to the Centre and State to ascertain the feasibility of confiscating all black money, Benami property, and disproportionate assets.
It also sought direction to awarding life imprisonment in the offences relating to black money, Benami property, money laundering, disproportionate assets, bribery, profiteering, hoarding, adulteration, black marketing, human-drug trafficking, tax evasion and dishonest misappropriation of property by the cheating fraud forgery.
Petitioner Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay in his PIL stated that the court may constitute an expert committee or direct the Law Commission of India to examine the stringent anti-corruption laws of the developed countries, particularly the laws relating to bribery, black money, benami property, disproportionate assets, tax evasion, money laundering, profiteering, hoarding, adulteration, human and drug trafficking, black marketing, dishonest misappropriation of property by cheating fraud forgery, and prepare a comprehensive report within three months.
"Corruption undermines democracy and rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts markets, erodes the quality of life and allows organized crime like separatism, terrorism, Naxalism, radicalism, gambling, smuggling, kidnapping, money laundering, and extortion and other threats to human security to flourish. It hurts EWS-BPL (Economically Weaker Sections-Below the Poverty Line) families excessively by diverting the funds intended for their development, undermines the government's ability to provide basic services, seeds inequality and injustice, and discourages foreign aid and investment," the plea stated.
It also stated, "Corruption is a key factor in economic underperformance and the main obstacle in poverty alleviation. The Right to life liberty guaranteed under Article 21 (of (the Indian Constitution) cannot be secured and the golden goals of the Preamble cannot be achieved without curbing corruption. So, the Centre and State must implement stringent anti-corruption laws in order to give a strong message that it is determined to weed out corruption, black money generation, benami transaction and money laundering. The Centre must take steps to reaffirm the rule of law, improve transparency and warn the looters that betrayal of public trust will no longer be tolerated."
