The HC allowed the appeal, set aside the impugned Single Judge...

The HC allowed the appeal, set aside the impugned Single Judge judgment and upheld the Directorate’s provisional attachment order under Section 5 of the PMLA. The Court held the allocation letter to constitute “property” within Section 2(1)(v) and that misrepresentation in obtaining the allocation generated “proceeds of crime” under Section 2(1)(u), thereby attracting an offence under Section 3; continued possession, utilisation and monetisation of the coal constituted ongoing laundering. The HC rejected a pre-allocation temporal cutoff and affirmed the Directorate’s jurisdiction to attach the quantified value of extracted coal where a prima facie nexus to predicate offences and proceeds was established and the respondent failed to rebut the presumption of taint.