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Indian employees working with such foreign companies, who are unaware about the illicit operations being run in the background, are targeted by the prosecuting agencies while the responsible Chinese official are beyond their reach, she told SC.
The Supreme Court, in mid-March, granted interim protection from arrest to a 24-year-old woman who has many FIRs registered against her in different parts of India in a case related to predatory Chinese lending apps.
Priyanshi Kandpal, a resident of Uttarakhand’s Haldwani, submitted before the apex court that she had to spend 5 months behind bars in connection with an FIR registered in Worli, Mumbai.
She is accused of working as a mandarin translator during her one year of employment with Omelette Technology Private Ltd, a Bengaluru-based and Chinese controlled company which allegedly duped many in the name of disbursing online loans.
She was accused of running a pan-India operations of the company. In her defence, the accused prayed that she was not even qualified to develop a mobile application.
Kandpal told a bench of Justices SK Kaul and Aravind Kumar that Indian employees working with such foreign companies, who are unaware about the illicit operations being run in the background, are targeted by the prosecuting agencies while the individuals of Chinese origin controlling the operations are beyond the reach of the agencies.
In her petition, the accused submitted that she was first arrested in several cases after her arrest in the first such case and hence she had to spend 5 months in jail.
She also told the court that she was recently served a notice under Section 91 of the CrPC, asking her to join police investigation in Odisha. The accused also said that she had also joined investigations by economic offences wings of several state police forces following summons.
The accused further said that she was arrested from her residence in Haldwani in violation of the guidelines laid down in the top court in its landmark judgment of the 2014 Arnesh Kumar vs State of Bihar which states that “arrests should be an exception, in cases where the punishment is less than seven years of imprisonment”.
Kandpal said that she had to approach different jurisdictional courts to secure bail as she was arrested in multiple FIRs registered at different places before she was released on bail.
Noting her miseries, the Supreme Court provided her protection from arrest not only in the already-registered cases but also in similar FIRs which might be registered in the future.
“We are inclined to accede to the request of the petitioner and direct that in case of FIR No.26/2022 in CR No.16/2022 dated 25.01.2022 registered at PS Central Zone Cyber Police Station, Worli, Mumbai or any further FIR registered against the petitioner, she shall be enlarged on bail on the same terms on which she was enlarged earlier,” the court ordered.
Senior advocate Anupam Lal Das, along with advocates Kartikeya Singh, Samarth Shandilya, Puru Jain, and Anirudh Singh. Advocate-on-Record or AOR was Lzafeer Ahmad.
