Supreme Court has granted Anticipatory Bail to Pawan Kumar Agrawal and Ashok Agrawal, Directors of M/s Prime Ispat Ltd., Raipur, Chhattisgarh in the alleged offence under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.
The Bench of HMJ M.R. Shah and HMJ Sudhanshu Dhulia set aside the order passed by the High Court of Chhattisgarh whereby the application for Anticipatory Bail of the Petitioners was dismissed by holding that the ‘twin conditions’ under Section 45, PMLA have been revived.
The Petitioners argued that ECIR was registered in the year 2017 and after due investigation, a Prosecution Complaint was filed before the Special Judge (PMLA) in the year 2018. It was submitted that the Petitioners were never arrested during the investigation and have in fact cooperated in the investigation by appearing before the Enforcement Directorate.
The Petitioners relied upon the decision of the Supreme Court in Siddharth vs. State of Uttar Pradesh
LL 2021 SC 391 and Amanpreet Singh v. Republic of India SLP (Crl.) No. 5234/2021 and argued that Petitioners are entitled to be granted bail since the Prosecution Complaint has been filed without arrest. It was further argued that since the filing of the Prosecution Complaint i.e. 2018 the Petitioners have not been summoned even once by the Enforcement Directorate and therefore no prejudice shall be caused to the Enforcement Directorate if the Petitioners are granted, Anticipatory Bail.
The Court after hearing both the parties noted that the Petitioners have cooperated in the investigation and no custodial interrogation is required and granted Anticipatory Bail to the Petitioners by making the interim protection absolute.
Advocates For Petitioners: Advocate Abhimanyu Bhandari instructed by Vardharma Chambers, along with Kartika Sharma, Somesh Tiwari, Chirag Madan, Vidula Mehrotra, and Utsav Saxena Advocates
Advocates for Respondents: Mr. Sanjay Jain, A.S.G. Mr. Mukesh Kumar Maroria, AOR, Mr. Zoheb Hussain, Mr. Padmesh Mishra, Mr. Arkaj Kumar, Ms. Ashima Gupta, Ms. Tanya Aggarwal, Advocates.
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