Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002

The Supreme Court held that Pinarayi Vijayan and the other appellants, who were not parties to the writ petition in which a Kerala High Court Single Judge directed the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau to register FIRs on information from the Enforcement Directorate (ED), had locus to appeal, and that the Division Bench wrongly refused them leave. The appeals were restored and the investigation stayed for ten days, with no opinion on the merits (paras 12-18).

The Supreme Court granted bail to Sanjay Sureka, accused in the Enforcement Directorate's money-laundering case arising from the Concast Steel and Power insolvency. It rejected his plea that a five-day delay in forwarding the arrest order and material to the Adjudicating Authority under Section 19(2) of the PMLA vitiated the arrest, but held that 20 months' custody, completed investigation against him and a trial unlikely to end soon outweighed the Section 45 twin conditions (paras 10-13).

A Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court granted interim bail from 11.09.2026 to 21.12.2026 to a 76-year-old accused in a money-laundering case linked to alleged drug smuggling, on medical grounds and after more than five years in custody (paras 21-24). The rigours of Section 45 of the PMLA, it held, cannot keep in prison a person so unfit that treatment inside becomes a mere formality (para 17).

The Bombay High Court allowed Coda Payments India's appeal under Section 42 of the PMLA and quashed the Appellate Tribunal's order upholding the freezing of its bank and payment-gateway accounts (paras 1, 54). The Adjudicating Authority never recorded the Section 8(2) finding that the property was involved in money laundering, and the Tribunal could not supply it (paras 25-30). Freezing about Rs. 100 crore when one FIR of Rs. 85,650 remained was "ex-facie excessive and disproportionate" (para 40).

The Punjab and Haryana High Court refused regular bail to Sandeep Gupta, accused by the Enforcement Directorate of laundering about ₹236 crore diverted from Richa Industries Limited through shell entities (paras 1-2, 8). It held that where material prima facie shows a specific, active role, especially through misuse of corporate or fiduciary structures, bail must be approached with greater circumspection (paras 6.1-7).

The Supreme Court granted bail to Tamil Nadu's former Transport Minister V. Senthil Balaji, in custody for over 15 months under the PMLA, though it could not say there was no prima facie case. Inordinate trial delay and a higher bail threshold cannot go together: Constitutional Courts may grant bail under Article 21 when the trial cannot end within a reasonable time, as with over 2000 accused and 600 witnesses here (paras 13, 14, 17, 25, 27, 29).

The Supreme Court granted bail to former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia in the CBI and ED excise-policy cases, holding that about 17 months in custody with the trial not even begun violated his right to a speedy trial under Article 21. The right to bail for long incarceration is read into Section 45 PMLA, and courts must recognise that 'bail is rule and jail is exception' (paras 24, 32, 44, 49-54).

The Supreme Court held that courts can judicially review an arrest under Section 19(1) of the PMLA, and that the 'reasons to believe' must be supplied to the arrestee and must weigh exonerating material too, but declined to quash Arvind Kejriwal's arrest on that limited review. It referred to a larger Bench whether the 'need and necessity to arrest' is a separate ground of challenge, and released him on interim bail (paras 21, 36, 55, 65, 84-85).

The Supreme Court held that a person arrested under the UAPA, or for any other offence, has a fundamental and statutory right to receive the grounds of arrest in writing, applying Pankaj Bansal to Section 43B(1) of the UAPA. As Prabir Purkayastha was remanded at 6:00 a.m. before written grounds reached him or his lawyer, his arrest and remand were declared invalid and he was ordered released on bail bonds (paras 20, 50-53).

Hearing Arvind Kejriwal's challenge to his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate, the Supreme Court released the Delhi Chief Minister on interim bail till 1 June 2024 because the 18th Lok Sabha elections were under way. The power to grant regular bail includes interim bail, and weighing his particular circumstances, with no conviction, no criminal antecedents and the legality of his arrest pending, gave politicians no special privilege (paras 7, 8, 10, 15, 17-18).

The Supreme Court dismissed, with costs of Rs. 1 lakh, a former Deputy Secretary's appeal against refusal of bail in a money-laundering case (paras 2, 30). The first proviso to Section 45 of the PMLA, which allows bail to a woman, is discretionary and "could not be construed as a mandatory or obligatory on the part of the Court to release them" (para 24). The Court also strongly deprecated misstatements made in the special leave petition (paras 12, 15).

The Supreme Court refused bail to former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia in the CBI and ED cases over the 2021-22 excise policy, finding the allegation that wholesale margins were raised to generate kickbacks tentatively supported. It held, however, that the right to bail on delay and long custody must be read into Section 439 CrPC and Section 45 PMLA, and let him apply afresh if the trial dragged on (paras 21, 25, 28-29).