Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow by choosing the correct/most appropriate options: 

India’s criminal justice system, we are led to believe, is built on a set of received axioms that are inherent to the basic precepts of justice and fairness. These include the idea that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty; the idea that a person detained on suspicion of having committed an offense would be entitled to bail pending trial; the idea that a criminal law ought not to be retroactive; the idea that a person accused of an offense must be informed of the charges made against him; and the idea that a suspect has a privilege against incriminating herself.

Today, each of these principles is so consumed by a welter of exceptions that their bases have lost all vigor. Regrettably, this erosion in our values has time and again received the Supreme Court of India’s imprimatur. The latest example is the judgment of a three-judge bench in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary vs Union of India, delivered on July 27. In it, the Court has upheld vast parts of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, despite the law’s inversion of seemingly time-honored maxims of criminal jurisprudence.

Briefly put, “money laundering” refers to the process through which the proceeds from criminal activity are masked with a view to concealing their illegitimate source. From the mid-1980s onwards, countries around the world began to see a need to introduce special legislation to curb and punish this process. The PMLA came out of these initiatives. It defines the crime itself in vague terms. Section 3 of the Act says, “Whosoever directly or indirectly attempts to indulge or knowingly assists or knowingly is a party or is actually involved in any process or activity connected with the proceeds of crime including its concealment, possession, acquisition or use and projecting or claiming it as untainted property shall be guilty of the offense of money-laundering.”