New Delhi, Aug 21 (PTI) The Delhi High Court has disapproved the Enforcement Directorate (ED)'s move to add a six-year-old case to its Enforcement Case Information Report after the FIR forming the basis of its anti-money laundering proceedings was closed.

Calling the addition illegal and procedurally irregular, Justice Anish Dayal said that despite knowledge, the ED neither registered a fresh Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) nor incorporated the subsequently added FIR into the ECIR in due time. The addendum was issued in 2025 only after a protest petition against the police's cancellation report in the FIR having the scheduled offence was dismissed, he added.

The bench asserted that the ED's conduct supported the contention that the addition was an attempt to "somehow preserve the existing ECIR" and retain the coercive powers under the PMLA with respect to search, seizure, freezing and attachment of properties of the petitioners.

"The conduct of the ED in this regard is found wanting and raises serious concerns. This circumstance further fortifies the conclusion of this Court that the impugned addendum is vitiated by illegality, procedural impropriety, irrationality and a colourable exercise of power," said the court in the judgment dated August 18.

"The issuance of an addendum to such an ECIR is, in the opinion of this Court, without jurisdiction, illegal and procedurally irregular. Nothing prevented the ED from independently registering an ECIR in relation to the first FIR, which admittedly continues to subsist, if the statutory requirements for doing so were otherwise satisfied. It chose not to do so, for reasons best known to it," said the court.

The ED's ECIR, registered in December 2021, arose from an FIR registered by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) in February 2021 over a dispute between two factions of the family of late Mahendra Prasad, a former member of Parliament. The issue pertained to share transfers and bank transactions by a faction of the family on the basis of forged signatures of Prasad's wife, Satula Devi.

In December 2022, the EOW, however, filed a cancellation report upon completion of the investigation, saying that no offence was made out.

Earlier, in 2019, another FIR was registered alleging wrongful confinement of the ex-MP's wife, removal of certain jewellery and offences under the Passports Act. This FIR was introduced as an addendum in August 2025.

The petitioners, who were family members as well as directors and senior management of Prasad's Aristo Group of Companies, sought relief in relation to proceedings under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), including the 'search and seizure' proceedings initiated or sought to be initiated by the ED.

The court said that an ECIR depended upon the existence of a predicate offence, and therefore, any action taken by the ED would come to an end on the closure of the FIR on the predicate offence.

It asserted that in the present case, after the EOW filed a cancellation report, which was accepted by the trial court, the scheduled offence could not be stated to be "lurking in the background" to sustain the continuation of proceedings under the PMLA.

Unless a superior court overturns the closure, the ED's claim that the "ghost of a scheduled offence continues to hover" and sustain the ECIR cannot be accepted as it would be "wholly illogical", subvert the foundational premise of the PMLA and allow misuse of the statutory process, the court opined.

In the judgment, the court observed that the 2019 FIR pre-dated the ECIR and continued to subsist for nearly six years before it was introduced as an addendum, and the agency cannot be permitted to "turn the clock backwards".

"If such a course were to be accepted without limitation, it would confer an untrammelled licence upon the ED to continually rope in prior FIRs, even where the connection is tenuous or founded upon a slender factual thread, merely to keep an ECIR alive," the court said.

"The disputes between the parties have remained heavily contested between different factions of the family. In circumstances where rival factions continue to contest rights over a substantial estate, successive allegations and proceedings may inevitably proliferate. This circumstance, however, cannot by itself furnish a sufficient legal basis for indefinitely expanding the scope of an ECIR by adding previously registered predicate offences merely because some factual strand may be discerned between them," added the court.

The court quashed all proceedings, including any coercive action taken by ED, under the ECIR, and directed the agency to restore status quo ante in favour of respective petitioners. PTI ADS KSS KSS