Participation In Protest No Ground To Deny Bail In PMLA Case: Delhi High Court
The Delhi High Court on Friday held that participation on protests is no ground to deny bail to an accused in a money laundering case under PMLA.
Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani made the observation while granting bail to an accused in a PMLA case linked to the alleged activities of the banned outfit Popular Front of India and its political affiliate Social Democratic Party of India.
“Participation in protest activities in that temporal context, however unseemly the form of protest may be alleged to have been, cannot at this stage, be treated as a determinative factor for denying bail in a PMLA prosecution, particularly when the primary focus of the allegation is on the financial transactions alleged to have been undertaken by the petitioner,” the Court said while granting bail to Wahidur Rahman.
The Court noted that the allegations against him pertained to transactions amounting to only Rs. 3.15 lakh in the backdrop of the ED's allegation that SDPI accounts received over Rs. 32.94 crore between 2010 and 2025.
The ED had alleged that Rahman, who was stated to be a Physical Education trainer with PFI, had facilitated “layering” of funds by routing cash deposits through multiple bank accounts before transferring them to SDPI accounts.
The agency also relied on his email ID and phone contacts allegedly linked to PFI and SDPI.
Rejecting the ED's reliance on such material at the stage of bail, the Court observed:
“When a person is admittedly associated with an organisation in a professional or functional capacity, it is neither unusual nor inherently suspicious that he would maintain email identifiers or contact entries reflecting the name of that association.”
The Court noted that although the ECIR was registered in 2022, Rahman was named for the first time only in the seventh supplementary prosecution complaint filed in May 2025.
On ED's allegations regarding the accused's participation in protests against the ban on PFI, the Court held that such allegations related to a period prior to PFI being declared an unlawful association and could not be treated as determinative for denying bail in a PMLA prosecution.
The Court also took note of Rahman's incarceration for over one year and two months while the matter was still at the stage of arguments on charge, with the prosecution citing around 250 witnesses and over 600 documents across seven prosecution complaints.
Accordingly, the Court granted regular bail to Rahman, subject to conditions.
Title: WAHIDUR RAHMAN v. ED