MUMBAI: A special court on Friday discharged Maharashtra food and civil supplies minister and senior NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal in a money laundering case relating to the construction of Maharashtra Sadan in New Delhi.
The PMLA court (Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) also discharged Bhujbal’s son Pankaj, nephew Sameer and several other accused, including prominent city builder Asif Balwa.
The case relates to a 2005-2006 deal that the NCP leader, when he was state PWD minister, allegedly gave to a firm for the construction of Maharashtra Sadan in the national capital. According to the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Bhujbal and his family members had received kickbacks from the firm, which allegedly transferred money to firms in which Pankaj and Sameer Bhujbal were directors.
On Friday, Special Judge Satyanarayan R Navandar allowed multiple discharge applications, observing that the prosecution’s case was founded entirely on predicate offences that no longer survived.
“The present PMLA case is based upon the allegations of crime proceeds generated by the accused persons from the predicate offences,” the court noted, adding that once those scheduled offences failed, “there was no generation of proceeds of crime” within the meaning of the law.
The court recorded that the ED’s prosecution complaints were founded on two FIRs — one registered by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), and other by the Navi Mumbai police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW). The court found that almost all the accused had already been discharged in the underlying proceedings and that those discharge orders had attained finality as they were not challenged by the state.
In reaching this conclusion, the court relied on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary vs Union of India, reiterating that “proceeds of crime” under the PMLA must arise from a scheduled offence. Quoting the apex court, the judge noted that property can be treated as tainted only if it is “derived or obtained, directly or indirectly, as a result of criminal activity relating to a scheduled offence”.
The case traces its origins to a 2014 public interest litigation, following which the Bombay High Court directed a joint inquiry by the ACB and the ED into allegations against Bhujbal and his relatives.
Following the inquiry, the ACB registered FIRs in 2015 alleging irregularities in the award of public works contracts, including the construction of Maharashtra Sadan in New Delhi, an RTO building in Andheri, and a state guest house at Malabar Hill. Separately, the EOW registered a case relating to a private housing project at Navi Mumbai. The ED later initiated money-laundering proceedings on the basis of both FIRs.
Bhujbal was arrested by the ED in March 2016 and remained in custody for over two years before being granted bail by the Bombay High Court in 2018. In 2021, however, the special court hearing the ACB case discharged Bhujbal and most other accused, recording detailed findings that no prima facie case was made out. Similarly, in the Navi Mumbai EOW case, four of the five accused were discharged by a Sessions Court, with the state not challenging those orders.
Taking note of these developments, the PMLA court held that there was a “specific finding of the competent court to the effect that no predicate offence is made out for framing of charges” and that in such circumstances, the ED’s prosecution could not legally survive.
With this effectively bringing to an end the decade-old PMLA case against Bhujbal, only an ACB case relating to alleged irregularities in the construction of a central library at Mumbai University in Kalina remains pending against the NCP leader.