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Saumya Chaurasia vs Directorate of Enforcement

Criminal Appeal · 2023 INSC 1073Decided 14 Dec 2023
Criminal Appeal No. 3840 of 2023
Aniruddha Bose · Bela M. Trivedi

Background

The appellant, a Deputy Secretary/OSD in the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister's Office, was arrested in December 2022 in a money-laundering case linked to an alleged coal-transport extortion racket run by one Suryakant Tiwari, worth around Rs. 540 crore. The Enforcement Directorate alleged she used her political access to help the racket operate and that extorted funds were routed to her and used to buy properties in the names of her mother, cousin and husband. After Chhattisgarh's High Court refused her bail, she appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing (among other things) that the underlying "scheduled offences" needed to sustain a money-laundering charge no longer existed because they had allegedly been dropped from the co-accused's chargesheet.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court first found that the appellant's own legal team had wrongly claimed in her petition that a later chargesheet and cognizance order (from June 2023) were placed before the High Court, when in fact those documents did not even exist until after arguments had concluded: a misrepresentation the Court called a "bold attempt to misrepresent the facts," in breach of the Advocate-on-Record's certification duties, which alone justified dismissal. On the merits, the Court held there was substantial prima facie evidence (money trails, property purchases in relatives' names, and links to the co-accused) supporting the money-laundering allegations, and that the discretionary bail benefit given to women under the PMLA's proviso to Section 45 is not automatic but must be weighed against the seriousness of the evidence. It also rejected the argument that the case must fail because the "scheduled offence" had been dropped, noting the investigating officer had not actually dropped the relevant charge and that only a court's final acquittal/discharge/quashing of the predicate offence, not a chargesheet's wording, can extinguish a money-laundering case. The appeal was dismissed, with a Rs. 1 lakh cost imposed on the appellant for misrepresenting facts.

Lesson Learnt

Bail benefits given to women, minors, or the sick under special laws like the PMLA are discretionary, not automatic, and are weighed against the strength of the evidence; separately, misrepresenting facts or the record to the Supreme Court, especially through a lawyer's formal certification, is treated seriously and can by itself doom an appeal, regardless of its underlying merits.

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

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