The Jharkhand High Court has dismissed a petition seeking to keep money laundering proceedings under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) in abeyance until the framing of charges or discharge in the underlying predicate offences, holding that the PMLA trial cannot be halted merely because proceedings in the scheduled offences are still pending. 

The bench of Justice Sujit Narayan Prasad has observed that the petitioner was effectively seeking to stall ongoing PMLA proceedings despite the existence of an active prosecution complaint and continuing investigation. It noted that the PMLA is a special legislation enacted to combat money laundering and ensure effective prosecution of economic offences. 

A criminal miscellaneous petition was filed under Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), which is equivalent to the erstwhile Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The petitioner had challenged an order of the Special PMLA Court, Ranchi, which had rejected his request to keep the Enforcement Directorate (ED) prosecution in abeyance. 

The matter originates from an Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) case registered in 2019 against a junior engineer accused of demanding a bribe for clearing payments related to a road construction project. During the trap proceedings and subsequent searches, cash amounting to ₹2.67 crore was recovered, leading investigators to suspect a wider corruption network. 

Based on the ACB FIR, the Enforcement Directorate registered an ECIR in September 2020 and later expanded the investigation after searches conducted in 2023 allegedly revealed a larger conspiracy involving laundering of proceeds of crime through accommodation entries and bank accounts. 

The petitioner was arrested by the ED in June 2023 and was subsequently named as an accused in a supplementary prosecution complaint filed before the Special PMLA Court. 

The petitioner contended that the existence of “proceeds of crime” derived from a scheduled offence is a prerequisite for initiation and continuation of proceedings under the PMLA. Relying on Supreme Court judgments including Vijay Madanlal Choudhary v. Union of India and V. Senthil Balaji v. State, it was argued that a PMLA prosecution cannot survive independently if the predicate offence fails and that the money laundering proceedings should therefore remain suspended until the status of the scheduled offences becomes clear. 

According to the petitioner, continuing the PMLA proceedings before charges were framed in the predicate cases would cause serious prejudice and irreparable harm. 

The ED opposed the plea, arguing that the investigation remained active and had expanded significantly, with multiple supplementary prosecution complaints having been filed and 36 accused persons allegedly involved in laundering proceeds of crime worth around ₹90 crore. 

The agency further submitted that the petition amounted to an attempt to delay the trial of a serious economic offence. It emphasized that the main predicate offence registered by the ACB had already progressed substantially, with a charge sheet filed and prosecution evidence being recorded. 

The ED also relied on Section 44 of the PMLA, which clarifies that the jurisdiction of the Special Court dealing with money laundering offences is not dependent on orders passed in the scheduled offence and that trials under the PMLA and the predicate offence are not to be treated as a joint trial. 

The High Court undertook an extensive examination of the scope of its inherent powers under Section 528 BNSS and reiterated that such powers are extraordinary and must be exercised sparingly, only to prevent abuse of process or secure the ends of justice. The Court referred to several Supreme Court decisions including Didigam Bikshapathi, Rajiv Thapar, Dhruvaram Murlidhar Sonar, Anand Kumar Mohatta, Amar Nath, and Madhu Limaye to underline the limited circumstances in which criminal proceedings can be interfered with at an intermediate stage. 

Referring specifically to Section 44 of the PMLA, the Court highlighted the statutory explanation inserted by Parliament clarifying that proceedings under the PMLA are not procedurally dependent on developments in the scheduled offence. 

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