How to Prepare for Questioning by the ED or CBI

How to prepare for ED questioning: the short answer

Preparing for ED questioning means knowing the case the officers are looking at, knowing your own documents better than they do, and knowing the rules of the room. Most people who get into trouble at a Section 50 sitting do so because they guess, because they contradict their own bank records, or because they sign a statement they have not read properly.

Start with the summons. It tells you the ECIR number or the subject, the date, the officer and the documents wanted. If it does not say if you are a witness or an accused, assume you could be either. Our guide on what to do when you receive an ED summons covers replying, seeking another date and the first decisions. This guide picks up from there and deals with the questioning itself.

Then build your preparation in three parts. First, the facts: a written chronology of your dealings with the people and companies involved. Second, the papers: everything that supports that chronology, sorted by date. Third, the day: who will go with you, what you will carry, what medicines you need, and who will be told if you are not out by evening.

The same preparation works for the CBI, with differences in the law that we explain below. If the CBI has called you under Section 35 BNSS, read our guide on what happens when the CBI sends a Section 35 notice as well.

ED statement under Section 50 and a CBI statement: why the difference matters

An ED statement under Section 50 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002 is recorded by an officer who, according to the Supreme Court in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary v. Union of India (2022), is not a police officer. That means the bar on confessions to the police does not apply in the usual way. Section 50(3) obliges you to state the truth, and Section 50(4) treats the proceeding as a judicial proceeding, so a false statement can attract a separate offence. You sign the statement, and it can be used against you at trial.

There are limits. In Prem Prakash v. Union of India (2024), the Supreme Court held that a statement recorded under Section 50 from a person already in custody in an ED case cannot be used against him as a confession in the way an ordinary statement could, because the person is not speaking freely. The safeguard is narrow and depends on custody, so do not rely on it for a statement you give as a free person walking in on summons.

A CBI statement under Section 180 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (old Section 161 CrPC) is a statement to the police. Under Section 181 BNSS (old Section 162 CrPC) it is not signed, and it can be used at trial mainly to contradict you if you become a witness. A confession to a police officer cannot be proved against an accused under Section 23 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (old Sections 25 and 26 of the Evidence Act). The BNSS also allows the CBI to record statements by audio-video means.

So the risk is different. Before the ED, a careless answer becomes evidence. Before the CBI, a careless answer may not be evidence in itself, but it gives the investigator the lead that turns a witness into an accused, and it sets up a contradiction if you later give evidence in court.

The rules behind ED and CBI questioning

Build your own chronology before you walk in

The single most useful thing you can prepare is a dated chronology of your connection with the matter. When did you meet the main accused? Which companies did you work for or invest in? Which transfers went through your accounts, and why? Write it as a simple table: date, event, document that proves it. It should be for you and your lawyer only, not for handing over.

Then test it against the documents. Pull your bank statements for the whole period, not only the months you remember. Match every large credit and debit with an invoice, agreement or message. If a transfer has no paper behind it, you need to know that before the officer asks, and you need to decide with your lawyer how to explain it honestly.

When Advocate B.K. Singh prepares a client for ED questioning, he asks the client to explain each large bank entry aloud, as the officer would hear it. The practical tip from that exercise is that people stumble most on small round-sum transfers to relatives and on cash withdrawals, not on the big transactions they expected to be asked about, so prepare those first.

Expect the first part of any sitting to be about you: your education, family, income, properties, bank accounts, foreign travel and the companies where you are a director. Have exact answers ready. Vague answers about your own assets make officers doubt everything that follows.

What to collect and what to carry

Step by step: what happens on the day of questioning

ED offices in Delhi and the CBI headquarters on Lodhi Road follow broadly similar routines, though practice varies by officer.

1. Arrive on time with your papers

   Reach a little early. Security will check your identity and you will usually deposit your phone. Your lawyer can accompany you up to the office but is normally asked to wait outside the room.

2. Hand over documents against acknowledgement

   Give the indexed set with your covering letter and ask the officer to sign or stamp your copy. If documents are taken from you without a list, ask for a seizure memo or a written list.

3. Background questions

   The officer starts with your personal details, family, income, properties and accounts. Answer precisely and do not volunteer opinions about other people at this stage.

4. Questions on the transactions

   You will be shown documents, bank entries or chats and asked to explain them. Ask to see a document fully before answering, and say so if you do not recognise it or do not remember.

5. Recording of the statement

   The statement is usually typed by the officer in question-and-answer form. Insist that it is recorded in a language you understand, and if it is in English and you are more comfortable in Hindi, say so at the start.

6. Reading over and correcting

   Read every page before signing. Point out mistakes and ask that corrections be made in the text, or write the correction in your own hand above your signature. Do not sign a page you have not read.

7. Leaving, or being asked to return

   You may be allowed to leave the same day or asked to return on another date with more documents. Ask for the next date and the list in writing.

If you are arrested at the end of a sitting, you must be told the grounds of arrest in writing and produced before the court within 24 hours. Ask your lawyer to be informed immediately, and say clearly that you want to meet your lawyer.

Answering questions: what works and what backfires

Answer the question asked, and stop. Officers are trained to let silence run so that people fill it, and most damaging statements are things the person said after the actual answer. If the question is about a transfer, explain the transfer. Do not add what you think the other party intended.

Do not guess. "I do not remember the exact date, it will be in my bank statement" is a complete and honest answer. A confident wrong date, contradicted by the bank's records, is the sort of thing that later appears in a remand application as proof that you are hiding the truth.

Evasion and non-cooperation are different things. In Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India (2023), the Supreme Court held that not giving the answers the ED wants is not by itself a ground to arrest, because the ED cannot expect a person to confess. That protects someone who answers honestly but disagrees with the officer's theory. It does not protect someone who refuses to answer at all, lies, or fails to produce documents he has.

Before the CBI, you may decline to answer questions whose answers would tend to expose you to a criminal charge, under Section 180 BNSS and Article 20(3). Use this carefully and only on advice, because a blanket refusal is often quoted as non-cooperation in later bail hearings. Under the PMLA, the duty in Section 50 to state the truth makes silence riskier.

Can a lawyer be present at ED or CBI questioning?

There is no general right to have a lawyer at questioning sitting beside you. The Supreme Court held in Poolpandi v. Superintendent, Central Excise (1992) that a person summoned for questioning under the customs and excise laws has no right to the presence of a lawyer. In later cases, including Senior Intelligence Officer, DRI v. Jugal Kishore Samra (2011), courts have allowed a lawyer to remain at a place where he can see the person but not hear the questioning. The Delhi High Court and other High Courts have passed similar case-specific orders in ED and CBI matters, usually where there was a real fear of coercion.

Such an order has to be sought from the court, usually in a petition under Article 226 or in an anticipatory bail application, and it is not granted routinely. Do not walk into an ED office expecting your lawyer to be allowed into the room because a court allowed it in someone else's case.

Once a person is arrested, Section 38 BNSS (old Section 41D CrPC) gives him the right to meet an advocate of his choice during interrogation, though not throughout it. Courts often record specific timings for such meetings in remand orders.

Your lawyer's main work is outside the room: deciding whether to attend or seek a new date, preparing your chronology, writing to the agency about documents and timing, waiting outside on the day, and recording in writing anything that went wrong, such as overnight questioning or refusal of medicines.

Long hours, late nights, health and women

ED questioning has in the past run late into the night. In Ram Kotumal Issrani v. Directorate of Enforcement (April 2024), the Bombay High Court held that the right to sleep is a basic human requirement and asked the ED to issue directions on the timing of statements. In October 2024 the ED announced internal guidelines on recording statements at reasonable hours. If questioning continues well past office hours, note the time, ask for a break or another date, and have your lawyer write to the officer the next morning.

If you have a heart condition, diabetes or any illness, carry your medicines and a doctor's note, and tell the officer at the start. Ask for food and water breaks. A record that you asked and were refused is useful later; a complaint made weeks afterwards is not.

Women, children under fifteen, men above sixty and persons with a disability or acute illness cannot be required by the CBI to attend anywhere other than where they live, under Section 179 BNSS. The PMLA is different. In Abhishek Banerjee v. Directorate of Enforcement (2024), the Supreme Court held that the old Section 160 CrPC protection does not override Section 50 of the PMLA, so the ED can call a woman to its office. Many women nonetheless ask for, and some get, accommodation on timing or a female officer present, so ask.

Senior citizens and people with serious illness should raise their condition in writing before the date. If the ED refuses any accommodation, that refusal can be placed before the Delhi High Court in a petition seeking directions on the manner of questioning.

Phones, laptops and digital records

Expect to be asked for your phone. The ED can seize devices during a search under Section 17 of the PMLA, and the CBI can seize them under the BNSS. If your phone is taken, ask for a seizure memo that records the make, model and IMEI, and if the device is imaged, ask that the hash value be recorded. These details matter when the electronic evidence is used later under Section 63 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam.

Do not delete chats, emails or files after receiving a summons. Deletion is easy to detect from backups and the other party's phone, and it is the strongest ground the agency can give a court for arrest and against bail. If there is private material on the device unrelated to the case, raise it through your lawyer rather than wiping the phone.

Whether you can be compelled to give passwords is not fully settled, and courts have taken different views in different contexts. Do not decide this on the spot. Tell the officer you will take advice, and let your lawyer respond in writing.

Time and cost around ED and CBI questioning

If you fear arrest after questioning

Some signs raise the risk: you are named in the ECIR or FIR, others in the same case have been arrested, your accounts have been frozen, or you have been called repeatedly with your answers described as evasive. None of these makes arrest certain. Our guide on whether the ED can arrest you when you appear on summons explains the Section 19 conditions and the Pankaj Bansal rule on written grounds.

If the risk is real, an anticipatory bail application before the Special Court at Rouse Avenue or the Delhi High Court should be considered before the next date, not after. In ED cases, the twin conditions in Section 45 of the PMLA affect bail, and our page on bail in PMLA cases covers how courts apply them. In CBI cases, compliance with a Section 35 notice is itself a protection against arrest unless reasons are recorded, so attend every date.

Before an important sitting, tell a family member the time you went in and arrange for your lawyer to wait. If you are arrested, the family should note the time, ask for the arrest memo and grounds, and contact the lawyer so that the remand hearing is attended.

Mistakes people make in the interview room

• Going without the documents asked for. Coming empty-handed leads to repeat summons and is later called non-cooperation.
• Explaining other people's motives. Speculating about why your business partner did something turns your guess into the agency's evidence.
• Signing without reading. Once signed, a Section 50 statement is very hard to undo. Read every page, even at midnight.
• Contradicting your own records. Answers that do not match your bank statements or tax returns are the commonest reason a witness becomes a suspect.
• Coordinating answers with others. Calls and messages to co-accused before or after the sitting are often found on seized phones and used to allege tampering.
• Waiting weeks to complain. If you were questioned overnight, denied medicines or pressured, record it in writing within a day or two.

After the questioning: retraction, copies and the next summons

As soon as you leave, write down every question you remember, the documents shown to you, the time you went in and came out, and anything unusual. Send it to your lawyer the same night. This note becomes the basis for preparing the next sitting, and for any complaint about how the questioning was conducted.

You are usually not given a copy of your ED statement during the investigation. You can ask for it in writing; if the ED relies on it later, you are entitled to it with the complaint. Do not assume the statement says what you think it says.

If your statement was recorded under pressure, or recorded wrongly, a retraction must be made quickly and in writing, with reasons, usually by an affidavit sent to the agency and filed before the court. Advocate B.K. Singh's practical advice is that a retraction filed within days, with specific reasons for each line being withdrawn, carries weight; a general retraction filed months later, after arrest, is usually treated as an afterthought. Do not retract an accurate statement simply because it is unhelpful.

Prepare for the next summons with the note of the first. Officers often return to the same questions to check consistency. Answer as you did before if your answer was accurate, and if you have since found a document that changes an answer, say so openly at the start of the next sitting.

What to do this week

If the date is close, collect your bank statements, tax returns and the documents in the summons, draft your chronology and test it against the papers. Arrange medicines, identity proof and a family member who knows when you went in. Decide with your lawyer whether to attend on the date or write for another one with reasons.

If you are a company employee called about your employer, take independent advice if the company's lawyers also represent the promoters. Your interest and theirs may not be the same.

Our page on ED summons, ECIR and attachment explains how we work with clients through each summons, and for CBI matters see CBI investigation and trial defence. If an ECIR has been registered and you want to understand what it is, read what an ECIR is and whether it is like an FIR. Directors facing a parallel company fraud probe can read what happens in an SFIO investigation. When anticipatory bail is in question, our ED summons service page also explains how protection is sought.

For advice on your summons, notice or documents before the questioning, or for updates on how the courts are treating Section 50 statements, you can contact Advocate B.K. Singh.