TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2026 (7) TMI 1675
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....ding to Section 483 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023), seeks the cancellation of an order of regular bail dated 14th November, 2025. The order was passed by the learned Chief Judge, City Sessions Court, Calcutta, acting as the Designated Special Court under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (hereinafter referred to as the 'PMLA'), in connection with ML Case No. 11 of 2025. 3. The underlying prosecution arises out of a formal complaint alleging an offense under Section 3, punishable under Section 4 of the PMLA. By the impugned order, the learned Special Judge enlarged the opposite party/accused, Jitendra Prasad Verma, on regular bail. In doing so, the court completely bypassed the mandatory statutory boundaries and explicit commands embedded in Section 45(1) of the Act. 4. This case requires us to re-examine the structural boundaries of judicial discretion in anti-money laundering bail proceedings. Specifically, we must evaluate the standard for resetting a citizen's liberty when a special Court ignores vital material evidence and bypasses statutory bars. 5. To fully grasp the structural and anatomical perversity attributed to the impug....
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....ployee or a director listed on the formal corporate payroll of the Sahara Group, he could not be held responsible for the core corporate default. Second, the court laid heavy emphasis on the fact that no individual depositor or public witness had given an oral statement naming the opposite party directly, concluding that there was a lack of direct ocular evidence connecting him to the fraud. Third, the learned Special Judge noted that because the primary investigations into the predicate and scheduled offenses were stalled, and because the opposite party had spent 124 days in pre-trial detention, his continued custody would violate his personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution. 9. Mr. Arijit Chakrabarty, learned Counsel appearing on behalf of the Enforcement Directorate, has mounted an exhaustive attack against the impugned order. He submits that the order of the learned Special Court is not merely an erroneous exercise of judicial discretion, but a structural nullity. It is patently perverse, demonstrably capricious, and passed in open defiance of the mandatory statutory boundaries drawn by Section 45 of the PMLA. 10. He further submitted that t....
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.... demonstrates a deep-rooted, calculated involvement in the handling of the proceeds of crime. By entering the market to liquidate these assets through parallel cash channels, the opposite party committed a distinct, fresh infraction under Section 3 of the PMLA. This generation and circulation of unrecorded cash post- 2016 constitutes a continuing offense that persists as long as these illicit gains remain in active circulation, completely stripping the opposite party of any claim to casual visual innocence or structural detachment. 13. In this backdrop, Mr. Chakrabarti, has emphasized that the impugned order of the learned Special Court suffers from a profound and manifest perversity, having proceeded on an impermissible, microscopic dissection of verbal statements while turning a blind eye to this undeniable documentary trail. The court fundamentally misdirected itself in law by treating the PMLA offense as a mere tail of the predicate crime, erroneously concluding that a delay in the primary FIR or the opposite party's omission therein diluted the rigors of the special statute. Under the settled matrix of the law, an independent money laundering investigation stands on its....
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....irector v. Kanhaiya Prasad [2025 SCC OnLine SC 306], Mr. Chakrabarti submitted that economic offenses involving public money constitute a "class apart" and must be viewed through a completely different judicial prism as the white-collar crimes are committed with cool calculation and deliberate design and any casual, cursory, or cryptic order granting bail in such matters, without entering the thicket of Section 45, causes immense damage to the collective financial health of the nation. The 124 days spent in custody by the opposite party fall far short of the thresholds set by Section 436A of the Cr.P.C. (now Section 479 of the BNSS, 2023), and individual liberty under Article 21 cannot be viewed in isolation from the collective interests of thousands of defrauded investors. For money-launderers, jail is the rule and bail is an exception. 17. As reiterated in Tarun Kumar (supra), once the possession of proceeds of crime is shown, the court must presume the involvement of the accused in money laundering unless the contrary is proved, the learned counsel has stated that by looking for direct ocular evidence from individual depositors, the Special Court not only turned a blind eye t....
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....R)-16/2026) before the Regular Division Bench taking up Ponzi matters to avoid any conflict of views. This administrative consolidation underscores the structural continuity of the investigation and the danger of allowing a perverse order of bail to stand. 21. In conclusion, Mr. Chakrabarti submitted that individual liberty under Article 21 cannot be viewed in total isolation from the collective interests of thousands of defrauded investors whose life savings have been siphoned off through deep-rooted financial conspiracies. The opposite party has totally failed to overcome the twin conditions of Section 45. The order of the learned Special Judge is unsustainable in law, shocks the judicial conscience, and if allowed to stand, would derail a highly sensitive and ongoing investigation. 22. Therefore, it is prayed that the order dated 14.11.2025 be quashed and set aside, and the opposite party be directed to surrender immediately to custodial custody. 23. Conversely, Mr. Vikram Chaudhury, learned Senior counsel for the O.P. submitted that the entire factual matrix surrounding the disposal of the Sahara Group's properties must be viewed through the precise legal prism of ....
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....e nexus between the accused and the alleged proceeds of crime and a living scheduled offense. He merely facilitated the disposal of lands under the protective umbrella and explicit structural framework permitted by the directions issued by the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India, earning legitimate brokerage commissions in the ordinary course of business. 26. He vehemently contradicted the Petitioner-Directorate's attempt to colourably transmute these transactions into an offense of money laundering is fundamentally flawed in law. The monies received from third-party purchasers constituted valuable commercial consideration for the lands sold under the Supreme Court's directives, not the tainted fruits of a scheduled offense. At highest, an undeclared cash component in a real estate transaction constitutes an infraction of fiscal statutes under the Income Tax Act, 1961, which cannot be colourably transmuted into an offense of money laundering under the principles of Arnab Manoranjan Goswami v. State of Maharashtra [(2021) 2 SCC 427]. Ld. Counsel pointed out that out of the Rs.50 Croress deposited in the designated account of the Supreme Court, only Rs.30 Crores were disbursed, whi....
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....rvivability of the PMLA prosecution, as it cannot float in a legal vacuum detached from an active, living scheduled offence. Relying on V. Senthil Balaji v. State [(2024) 3 SCC 51], he underlined that the existence of an active scheduled offense is a sine qua non for the generation of "Proceeds of Crime." In the instant case, the structural base of the Kolkata ECIR was FIR No. 142 of 2020 registered at Bhubaneshwar, involving a disputed amount of a mere Rs.52,187. The local police filed a Closure Report in the said predicate offense on 27.08.2020, on the ground of a "mistake of fact," which was formally accepted by the Jurisdictional Magistrate vide an order dated 14th September, 2024.The learned counsel forcefully argued that with the absolute judicial dissolution and closure of this primary predicate offense and given the admitted fact that the opposite party is not an arrayed accused in any of the other 300 regional FIRs, the derivative PMLA proceedings against the opposite party must suffer a natural legal eclipse, as recognized by the Telangana High Court in its order dated 8th September 2022 passed in M/s Bharti Cement Corp. Pvt. Ltd. v. ED [CRLRC 84/2021]. 30. On the anvi....
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....been satisfied. 34. To arrive at a lawful and logically consistent finding, it is necessary to first delineate the structural topography of the law governing the cancellation of bail. Our criminal jurisprudence draws a sharp, qualitative distinction between two independent and mutually exclusive judicial pathways for taking away an accused person's liberty after regular bail has been granted: firstly, the occurrence of supervening circumstances born post-release, and secondly, the presence of inherent perversity and foundational illegality in the order granting bail itself. 35. The first pathway, governing "supervening circumstances," applies to situations where an order enlarging an accused on bail was legally unassailable and properly within jurisdiction at the time it was passed, but subsequent post-release developments demonstrate that the accused has abused his liberty. As established by the Supreme Court of India in landmark decisions such as State of Delhi v. Sanjay Gandhi [(1978) 2 SCC 411], Dolat Ram (supra), and reinforced down to State of Haryana v. Dharamraj [(2023) 17 SCC 510], this track requires the prosecution to prove definitive post-release misconduct. T....
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....rcise of liquidating the real estate assets of the Sahara Group was not an ordinary commercial venture, but a strictly conditioned, judicially monitored restitution process mandated by the Hon'ble Supreme Court by its order dated 11th July 2016 passed in SEBI VS. SAHARA INDIA REAL ESTATE CORPN. LTD. & ORS. The Apex Court, while permitting the sale of these properties to satisfy the compelling demands of thousands of systemic fraud victims, erected unyielding statutory guards: the sales could not fall below 90% of the stipulated circle rates, and the entirety of the proceeds, clear of bare tax liabilities, had to be faithfully secured in the designated SEBI-Sahara Account. This judicial framework was designed as a remedial mechanism to protect public savings; it was never intended to be weaponized as a conduit for generating parallel, unrecorded liquid wealth. Far from respecting this holy command, the opposite party systematically subverted the Apex Court's mandate by transforming a court-sanctioned liquidation into an active, multi-layered money laundering enterprise. The defense's contention that a violation of the Apex Court's order merely attracts the penalty of contemp....
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....illicit "cut" of Rs.5.75 Crores made to the Opposite party. Faced with such substantial physical and digital evidence, the statutory presumption under Section 24 was fully triggered. The opposite party offered no credible explanation to account for these exclusive ledgers, and the defence's argument that these transactions merely constitute an infraction under the Income Tax Act, 1961 is legally untenable. Generating vast parallel cash components out of a collapsed public deposit scheme cannot be colourably excused as simple tax evasion. By ignoring this unexplained documentary trail and focusing instead on the lack of direct oral statements from individual depositors, the Special Court engaged in an impermissible, microscopic dissection of verbal evidence, arriving at a conclusion on facts that no reasonable court could have reached. iv. Fourthly, the Special Court committed a grave error by treating the status or delay in the investigation of the predicate offense as a reason to dilute the PMLA case. The defence's reliance on the closure of the Bhubaneshwar FIR involving a minor sum cannot rescue the opposite party. As ruled in Aditya Tripathi (supra), a PMLA prosecution....
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.... On a comprehensive synthesis of the statutory framework of the PMLA and the binding precedents of the Supreme Court analysed above, we arrive at the following foundational legal principles: i. The offense of money laundering under Section 3 of the PMLA is a standalone, independent crime. Its statutory vitality is not dependent on the continuous survival, speed, or structural outcome of the predicate/scheduled offense. The delay, stay, or formal closure of a primary FIR by a local investigative agency does not automatically dissolve or dilute the independent statutory requirements for bail under Section 45 of the PMLA. ii. In the prosecution of complex financial frauds and whitecollar crimes, the existence of unrecorded parallel cash ledgers and digital transaction footprints found in the exclusive possession of an accused carries primary evidentiary weight at the stage of bail. A court cannot bypass the statutory presumption inverted by Section 24 of the PMLA by demanding direct oral statements from retail depositors implicating the opposite party, as money laundering is essentially an offense documented by paper and digital trails rather than oral pacts. ....