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Parvinder Singh v. Directorate of Enforcement

Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 519Decided 19 May 2026
Crl.A. No.-002678-002678 - 2026 (arising from SLP (Crl.) No. 12055 of 2025)
Justice M.M. Sundresh · Justice Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh · Justice Satish Chandra Sharma

Background

The Enforcement Directorate arrested the appellant in April 2024 in a money-laundering case and filed its prosecution complaint on 24 June 2024, just before India's new criminal procedure code, the BNSS, replaced the old CrPC on 1 July 2024. The Special Court actually took cognizance of the case on 2 July 2024, after the BNSS had come into force, without giving the appellant a hearing beforehand, even though the new law (first proviso to Section 223(1) BNSS) requires the accused to be heard before cognizance is taken. When the appellant sought recall of the cognizance order on this ground, the Special Court refused, and the Uttarakhand High Court upheld that refusal, reasoning the BNSS provision did not apply since the case had originated under the old law.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court disagreed with the High Court and set aside both the High Court's judgment and the Special Court's cognizance order. Following its own recent precedents (Tarsem Lal, Yash Tuteja, Kushal Kumar Agarwal), the Court held that a PMLA complaint is governed by the general criminal procedure on cognizance (formerly Sections 200-204 CrPC, now Sections 223-228 BNSS), and since actual cognizance was taken only on 2 July 2024, after the BNSS came into effect, the new law's mandatory pre-cognizance hearing requirement applied. The Court rejected the argument that an earlier procedural step (numbering the complaint and listing it) amounted to an "inquiry" that had already begun under the old law, holding that only the actual judicial application of mind in taking cognizance counts, and a purely ministerial step is not enough to attract the saving clause for pre-BNSS proceedings. It also rejected the argument that the appellant needed to show specific prejudice from the missed hearing, holding that skipping a mandatory hearing on liberty-affecting proceedings is not a mere irregularity but an illegality that vitiates the proceedings altogether.

Lesson Learnt

When a new criminal procedure law changes an accused person's rights (here, a mandatory hearing before a court takes cognizance of a case), what matters is the date the court actually performs that specific judicial act, not the date the underlying complaint was filed, and a breach of such a mandatory procedural safeguard is treated as a fundamental illegality, not something the accused must separately prove caused them harm.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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