MUMBAI: A Special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court last week rejected a plea filed by former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh, seeking deferment of framing of charges against him in the money laundering case related to alleged extortion from orchestra bars in Mumbai, until charges are framed in the predicate offence registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Special judge Mahesh K Jadhav also rejected Deshmukh’s plea for calling a status report from the CBI as regards remaining investigation in the scheduled offence.
Deshmukh’s counsel said the predicate offence had culminated in a chargesheet filed by the CBI in June 2022, which stated that the investigation in respect of two aspects was ongoing, but no subsequent status report had been filed by the agency and until the position in the scheduled offence was crystallised, the PMLA court ought not to proceed to frame charges against him and others.
The lawyer relied on Supreme Court rulings, holding that in the event the person is discharged of the scheduled offence against him there can be no offence of money laundering against him and contending that unless the predicate case reached the stage of charge, the present proceedings should not advance.
The ED opposed the plea, arguing that section 44(c) of the PMLA and its explanation make clear that even where both sets of offences are tried by the same court, it “shall not be construed as a joint trial”, and that pendency of the predicate offence is no bar to continuation of PMLA proceedings. It was also submitted that Deshmukh had not filed any discharge application in the predicate case and that the present application was an attempt to delay the matter.
The court recorded that the CBI had filed its chargesheet in June 2022 arraigning Deshmukh as an accused, a fact not in dispute between the parties. On the demand for a status report, the judge observed that the CBI was not a party to the present proceedings and that if the applicant sought such information, he could pursue it through appropriate statutory remedies, “and not by making tools to the Court to call upon material for his support”. The prayer to compel a CBI report was described as “totally unwarranted”.
As regards the argument regarding pre-requisite of the predicate offence, the court acknowledged the legal principle that prosecution under the PMLA cannot proceed in absence of a predicate or scheduled offence. However, it underlined that in the present case a chargesheet in the scheduled offence had already been filed and that section 44 makes clear that trial of both sets of offences by the same court “shall not be construed as a joint trial”.
The court noted the applicant had “nowhere came with the case that he has filed discharge application and not shown any material to defer this trial till framing of charge in CBI case,” and on that basis held that the prayer to defer the hearing on charge was “not tenable in the eye of law”.