1. This appeal under Section 35 of the Foreign Exchange Management Act 1999 ('FEMA') read with Section 54 of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1973 (“FERA”), is an off-shoot of the 'Jain Hawala Diaries' case which ended in the quashing of the criminal proceedings as a result of the judgment of the High Court upheld by the Supreme Court in Central Bureau of Investigation v. V.C. Shukla (1998) 3 SCC 410 [hereinafter referred to the V.C. Shukla case].

2. The present proceedings which emanated under FERA are stated to stand on a different footing, not affected by the closure of the criminal proceedings since FERA is a complete code in itself.

The Background

3. The background to the present appeal is that the Central Bureau of Investigation (“CBI”) searched the residential and office premises of Mr. J.K. Jain on 3rd and 4th May 1991 under FIR No. RC 5(S)/91-SIU(V) dated 20th April 1991. Besides, recovery of some Indian and foreign currencies, some documents were recovered. The documents included two spiral note books (marked MR 68/91 and MR 71/91), two small spiral pads (marked MR 69/91 and MR 70/91) and two files, each containing some loose sheets of papers (marked MR 72