Four aides of former Minister D.K. Shivakumar will now have to move the Supreme Court as a Division Bench of the High Court of Karnataka on Tuesday said it has no power in law to entertain the appeals filed by them questioning the August 29 order of a single judge, who had rejected the petitions against summons issued by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money laundering case.

However, a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Mohammad Nawaz directed the ED not to arrest Sachin Narayan, Sunil Kumar Sharma, Anjaneya Hanumanthaiah, and Rajendra N. for four weeks, to enable them to exercise legal remedy available to them to challenge the present proceedings initiated by the ED.

The Division Bench said it passed the interim order against their arrest as the ED had not taken any action as per the interim order when their petitions were pending for about six months before the single judge.

However, the four persons will have to appear before the ED when summoned, the Bench said, making it clear that the benefit of protection from arrest would not be available to Mr. Shivakumar as he was already arrested by the ED.

Also, the Division Bench said there was no bar, under Section 362 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, on the single judge to continue the interim order in favour of the petitioners even after dismissal of their petitions. The single judge had said that Section 362 of Code of Criminal Procedure prohibit courts from altering or reviewing its judgements under the provisions of Code of Criminal Procedure, except correcting clerical or arithmetic errors.

While senior advocates representing Mr. Shivakumar’s aides contended that a Division Bench had the jurisdiction to hear the appeals as the single judge had erroneously stated that had had exercised powers under Code of Criminal Procedure in dismissing their petitions, the senior advocates representing ED had said that contents of petitions and order passed by the single judge had the ingredients of Code of Criminal Procedure and hence, appeals can be filed only before the Supreme Court.