High yardstick for granting bail must not be given the go-by: HC

Bail denied to 74-yr-old auditor in a ₹1,626-cr PMLA case

Refusing bail to a 74-year-old auditor, an accused in a money laundering scam worth Rs 1,626 crore, the Punjab and Haryana high court has said that high yardstick for granting bail under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, must not be given a go-by.

“...it needs to be emphasised that offences under the PMLA constitute a category of their own and must be viewed with utmost seriousness as such offences not only pose a serious danger to the economic health of the nation but also impede the progress of the country. Such offences are committed with intense planning and calculation, and camouflaged surreptitiously, necessitating the investigating agency to go through the material collected with a fine comb so as to uncover such scams which, if left unaddressed, would without doubt be fatal to economic health of the country,” the bench of justice Manjari Nehru Kaul said, adding that the rigors of Section 45 of the PMLA which lay down an exceptionally high yardstick for grant of bail under PMLA, must not be given the go-by.

The PMLA under Section 45 mandates that before granting bail to an accused the public prosecutor has to be given an opportunity to oppose the application for such release and where the public prosecutor opposes the application, the court can allow bail if it is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the person is not guilty of such offence and that he is not likely to commit any offence while on bail.

The plea was from one Surjit Kumar Bansal, an auditor and accused in the money laundering probe involving Chandigarh based M/s Parabolic Drugs Limited, being probed by CBI and ED for allegedly defrauding a consortium of banks, led by the Central Bank of India, of ₹1,626.74 crore between 2009 and 2014.

The CBI had registered a criminal case in December 2021 and ED stepped in January 2022. Pranav Gupta, managing director, Vineet Gupta, director of the firm, were arrested by ED on October 28, 2023, and secured bail in December.

Bansal’s one of the arguments was that promoters have already secured the bail in this case and that he was not even an accused in the case being probed by the CBI.

The court observed that he was prima facie actively involved in the scam.

“As the statutory director of the accused company, the petitioner and his firm failed to red flag the huge diversion and siphoning off funds. Instead, he purportedly aided the accused company in obtaining loans by issuing certificates that did not accurately depict its financial status,” the bench recorded, adding that allegations are that these certificates and audit reports misrepresented the true financial position and were intentionally issued by the petitioner to facilitate loan procurement by the accused company.

It further took note of ED’s claims that without these certificates, the banks would not have extended loans of such magnitude to the accused company. “...it is hard to believe and digest that throughout this period, he was merely acting upon false information provided by the officials of the accused company, and remained oblivious to any wrongdoing,” it said also taking note of the fact that he was associated with the firm since 1996.

...it needs to be emphasised that offences under the PMLA must be viewed with utmost seriousness as such offences not only pose a serious danger to the economic health of the nation but also impede the progress of the country. If left unaddressed, it would without doubt be fatal to economic health of the country. —HIGH COURT