New Delhi: The Supreme Court has dismissed a petition seeking a review of its judgement that criminal conspiracy counts as a scheduled offence under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) only if the alleged conspiracy relates to an offence specifically listed in the Act’s schedule.
“There is no error apparent on the record. Even otherwise, there is no ground for review,” a two-judge bench comprising Justices Abhay Oka and Pankaj Mithal said on Tuesday last week (March 19).
According to the Bar and Bench legal news site, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) sought a review of the court’s judgement.
The ED is a financial crimes agency and can investigate the proceeds of a range of ‘scheduled’ offences under the PMLA that are probed by other investigating agencies.
In November, the apex court said that criminal conspiracy will only count as a scheduled offence under the PMLA if the conspiracy being alleged “is of committing an offence which is specifically included in the schedule”.
It said the ED’s argument that criminal conspiracy to commit a non-scheduled crime should count as a scheduled offence would make the PMLA’s schedule “meaningless or redundant”.
“If we accept such an interpretation, the statute may attract the vice of unconstitutionality for being manifestly arbitrary,” the same two-judge bench of Justices Oka and Mithal had said then.
The bench added: “It cannot be the legislature’s intention to make every offence not included in the schedule a scheduled offence by applying Section 120-B [of the Indian Penal Code, which deals with criminal conspiracy].”
Later last week, a different bench of the Supreme Court dismissed the Union government’s petition seeking a review of another judgement, which was made in October and said the ED must provide the grounds of arrest in writing to an accused.
Under the Narendra Modi government, the ED has been granted extraordinary powers through amendments to the PMLA, which critics say allow the government to use the agency to target the BJP’s political opponents.
The Supreme Court upheld key provisions of the PMLA in July 2022.
Its judgement was highly controversial in view of its adverse effects on citizens’ fundamental rights.
