TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2026 (8) TMI 596
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....23), currently pending adjudication before the learned Chief Judge, City Sessions Court at Calcutta, designated as the Special Court under the PMLA. The underlying investigation was done by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED), Kolkata Zonal Office-I, culminating in allegations of offenses punishable under Sections 3 and 4, read with Section 70 of the PMLA. 2. The Hon'ble the Chief Justice, by administrative orders as well as the coordination directives of the Vacation Division Bench dated 05.06.2026 had aligned the present regular bail petition (CRM(R)-16/2026) with the application for cancellation (CRM(R)-13/2026) before the Regular Division Bench taking up Ponzi matters to avoid any conflict of views. This administrative consolidation further clarifies the structural intersection between specialized PMLA bail applications and the overarching roster allocated for multi-crore public financial frauds and Ponzi scheme litigations. 3. The architectural design of the prosecution's case is rooted in a sprawling, multi-state financial catastrophe involving the unauthorized collection of public deposits under the institutional banner of credit cooperative societies, most promine....
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....o. 412/413 of 2012 in C.A. No. 9813 & 9833/2011). The sale consideration was deliberately undervalued relative to prevailing valuations, and a substantial off-the-books cash component, totalling Rs.76.29 crore across multiple city holdings, was siphoned off and concealed, generating fresh, untraceable proceeds of crime (PoC). 8. Following his arrest under Section 19 of the PMLA, the petitioner moved an application for regular bail before the learned Chief Judge, City Sessions Court at Calcutta. The learned Special Judge, by a detailed order dated December 22, 2025, summarily rejected the prayer, observing that the statutory bars under Section 45 of the PMLA were fully triggered and that the petitioner had failed to displace the statutory presumption of guilt. Aggrieved thereby, the petitioner has approached this Court. 9. Mr. Sandipan Ganguly, learned Senior Counsel appearing for the petitioner, have forcefully submitted that the petitioner was merely a salaried, mid-level employee within the land department's Corporate Coordination Module (CCM) / Crisis Management Team (CMT) of the Sahara Group, without equity ownership, policy-making powers, or executive signing authori....
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....try and are actively evading process. Given the immense magnitude of the complaint, the hundreds of crores of public money siphoned, and the devastating socio-economic ramification on vulnerable depositors, further custody is imperative to dismantle the corporate veil and trace the siphoned wealth. 16. He further submitted that the Hon'ble Supreme Court in SEBI v. Sahara (supra) had established a strict, transparent asset-liquidation mechanism to reimburse small depositors. The petitioner, using his powerful position as a top executive, completely subverted and cheated this protective mechanism by executing parallel, under-the-table transactions, generating over Rs.76.29 crore in unaccounted cash for personal enrichment that bypassed the designated SEBI-Sahara Refund Account, in complete defiance of the categorical directions of the Hon'ble Supreme Court. Instead of executing transparent sales to benefit the public corpus, the petitioner and his co-conspirators used the Supreme Court's liquidation window as a cover to push through parallel, irregular private sales, specifically involving a 32-acre tract held by M/s Sahara Prime City Limited. These properties were deliberatel....
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....nplayed as a mere administrative oversight or civil default. 22. The statutory mandate under Section 45 of the PMLA establishes a strict, non-obstante dual check on regular bail jurisprudence. The law explicitly debars this Court from granting regular bail unless we record a positive, judicially verifiable satisfaction that: i. There are reasonable grounds for believing that the accused is not guilty of the offense of money laundering; and ii. The accused is unlikely to commit any offense while on bail. 23. As enunciated by the Apex Court in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary (supra) and reaffirmed in Tarun Kumar vs. Assistant Director, Directorate of Enforcement [(2024) 13 SCC 788], economic offenses involving widespread public deposit scams are a class apart. They breach the collective financial trust of the community and cannot be equated with ordinary commercial disputes. The threshold to displace the statutory presumption of guilt requires a clear and unimpeachable record, which is conspicuously absent here. 24. The petitioner's endeavour to bypass Section 45 PMLA by invoking Pankaj Bansal (supra) which reinforced that "reasons to believe" must be recorded....