New Delhi, March 27 -- The Supreme Court has rejected a petition seeking a review of its ruling that a person cannot be charged under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) by invoking Section 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) if the alleged criminal conspiracy is not related to a scheduled offence under PMLA.

Section 120B of the IPC, which provides for punishment for a criminal conspiracy, was at the center of this case. The bench, comprising Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal, dismissed the petition seeking a review of the verdict delivered on November 29, 2023. The verdict also stated that it is not necessary for a person accused under Section 3 of the PMLA to have been shown as the accused in the scheduled offence.

The bench, in its recent order, stated: "Applications seeking hearing of the review petitions in Open Court are rejected. Delay condoned. We have perused the judgement and order dated November 29, 2023, which has been sought to be reviewed. There is no error apparent on the record. Even otherwise, there is no ground for review. Review petitions are dismissed."

On November 29, the top court held that the offence punishable under Section 120B of the IPC will become a scheduled offence only if the conspiracy alleged is of committing an offence which is specifically included in the Schedule.

The top court interpreted the provisions of the PMLA and stated that if two reasonable interpretations can be given to a particular provision of a penal statute, the court should generally adopt the interpretation that avoids the imposition of penal consequences. In other words, a more lenient interpretation of the two needs to be adopted. The court further explained that the legislative intent gathered from the definition of the scheduled offence under clause (y) of sub-section (1) of section 2 of the PMLA is that every crime which may generate proceeds of crime need not be a scheduled offence. Therefore, only certain specific offences have been included in the schedule.

The bench stated that allowing criminal conspiracy to be a scheduled offence by itself, without any link to the scheduled offence included in the PMLA, would make the schedule "meaningless or redundant". It added that

only because there is a conspiracy to commit an offence, the

same does not become an

aggravated offence.

The bench held that it cannot be the legislature's intention to make every offence not included in the schedule a scheduled offence by applying section 120B. Therefore, in their view, the offence under Section 120B of IPC included in Part A of the schedule will become a scheduled offence only if the criminal conspiracy is to commit any offence already included in Parts A, B or C of the Schedule.

The top court had pronounced the verdict in November 2023 on an appeal against the Karnataka High Court order which had refused to quash the money laundering case against a woman, who was former vice-chancellor of Alliance University. The Enforcement Directorate had booked her under provisions of PMLA by invoking section 120B of IPC though the offences for which the accused was charged were not scheduled offences. with agency inputs

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.