The power to refuse bail should not be used as a form of punishment, and detaining the applicant further without bail would be unfair and violate the provisions of Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

1. The applicant is one of the accused in PMLA Special Case No.1 of 2013 pending before the Special Court constituted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (for short, 'PMLA Act'), at Mumbai. The allegation against him is that he has committed the offence of Money Laundering as defined in section 3 of the PMLA Act, and punishable under section 4 thereof. By the present application, he seeks bail.

2. I have heard Mr.Mahesh Jethmalani with Mr.Dinesh Tiwari, the learned counsel for the applicant. I have heard Mr. S.K. Shinde, Public Prosecutor with Ms. Rebecca Gonsalves, learned counsel for the respondent no.1. I have heard Ms.S.S. Kaushik, APP for the State.

3. The complaint that has been filed before the Special Court runs into 61 pages. An affidavit in reply to the Bail Application that came to be filed by the respondent no.1 also runs into 34 pages. The applicant has also filed additional affidavit in support of the Bail Application, and again, an additional affidavit-in-reply came to be filed on behalf of the respondent no.1. Additionally, a compilation of a number of documents has been tendered by the parties.

4. In brief, the case against the applicant may be stated as follows:

That the applicant was, at the material time, Chairman and Managing Director of M/s. City Limosins (India) Ltd, City Realcom Ltd, and some other companies described as 'City Group of Companies'. That, 90% of the share capital of M/s. City Limosin India Ltd is held by the applicant and the Razaki family, two from which family are also accused in the said case. The applicant, through the said companies, floated various schemes offering unrealistic returns to the investors/depositors. A large number of people throughout the country invested sums in these companies. After securing substantial amounts from the investors, the Companies shut their operations. The cheques issued by the Companies to the investors, purporting to return the amounts invested by them, bounced. It is alleged that the number of cheques that bounced, is more than 42,000. Various criminal cases came to be registered against the applicant and other Directors of the aforesaid Companies, alleging cheating and criminal conspiracy. 42 criminal cases, based on 42 First Information Reports have been registered against the applicants, the said Companies and other Directors of the said Companies. These cases are not only in Mumbai or Maharashtra, but also in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi. In some cases, the investigation is over and chargesheets have been filed. That, the said companies have cheated investors to the tune of more than Rs.500 crores. That, some of the amounts from investors were received by the applicant in cash, but the same were not deposited in banks, and were utilised by the applicant for his personal use and expenses. That, the applicant purchased immovable and movable properties in his name out of the amounts invested by the investors. That, the applicant has thus, committed various offences of criminal breach of trust, cheating, criminal conspiracy etc, and has laundered the money earned by committing the offences in question.

5. The complaint gives details of various transactions which allegedly show the activities of the applicant amounting to money laundering as mentioned in section 3 of the PMLA Act, and claims that the applicant has committed an offence punishable under section 4 of the PMLA Act. An attempt has been made by the applicant to refute such claims by offering explanations with respect to such transactions, and a further attempt has been made by the Directorate of Enforcement – investigating and prosecuting agency – to again refute the explanations that are being given by the applicant. It would be wholly unnecessary to discuss the rival contentions in depth, so far as the present application is concerned. It cannot be disputed at this stage that the applicant is alleged to have committed offences of cheating and is