Judgment

Mr. Gurvinder Singh Gill, J.

The petitioner seeks grant of regular bail in respect of a complaint bearing no. COMA-2-2021 dated 22.1.2021 under Section 4 read with Section 70 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (in short hereinafter referred to as ‘the PMLA’).

2. Since the petitioner was neither initially arrayed as an accused in the complaint nor when some FIRs were registered in Haryana and Hyderabad pursuant to which some ECIRs came to be registered by Enforcement Directorate, the sequence leading to arraying of the petitioner as an accused needs to be referred to, which is briefly stated herein-under:

8.9.2018 : FIR No. 358/2018 dated 8.9.2018 was registered at Police Station Sadar Fatehabad, District Fatehabad, Haryana for offences under the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978 against Radhey Shyam and Bansi Lal, Directors of M/s FMLC & others.

9.9.2018 : FIR No. 859/2018 dated 9.9.2018 was registered at Police Station, Hisar, Haryana under Sections 420, 406 and 506 IPC, against Radhey Shyam and Bansi Lal, Directors of M/s FMLC & others.

31.8.2019 : Pursuant to constitution of S.I.T., the matters were investigated by S.I.T. and charge-sheet no.2 dated 31.8.2019 was presented in FIR no. 859 and charge-sheet no. 4 dated 20.11.2019 in FIR no. 358 was presented.

9.10.2019 : During the course of investigation of the aforesaid cases, it had transpired that the accused involved in the said cases were also involved in some other FIRs lodged in the State of Telangana i.e. FIR No. 710/2018 dated 30.8.2018, Police Station Kukkatpally, Telangana, FIR No. 643/2018 dated 15.10.2018, Police Station Ramchandrapuram, Cyberbad, Telangana, FIR No. 541/2018 dated 4.9.2018 at Police Station Chandanagar, Telangana and FIR No. 768/2018 dated 14.9.2018, Police Station Mailardedpally, Telangana. The Directorate of Enforcement, Hyderabad, on the basis of FIR dated 30.08.2018, registered ECIR No.10/HYZO dated 20.03.2019 against Radhey Shyam, Bansi Lal, M/s FMLC & M/s Global Marketing Pvt. Ltd. Subsequently, the Directorate of Enforcement, Hyderabad, on account of FIRs registered by Haryana Police and on the basis of the residential address and office address of the companies, transferred the investigation to the Chandigarh Zonal Office. The ECIR was renumbered as ECIR/03/CDZO-II/2019 dated 09.10.2019. Later, the Chandigarh Zonal Office, Directorate of Enforcement took cognizance of scheduled offences and initiated investigation by recording ECIR/CDZO-II/02/2021, dated 11.01.2021 at Chandigarh.

22.1.2021 : The Enforcement Directorate filed complaint dated 22.1.2021 (Annexure P-1) before Special Court, Panchkula against Radhey Shyam, Bansi Lal and others wherein the petitioner was cited as a witness at Sr. No. 23 in the list of witnesses. It may here be mentioned that even in FIR No. 358 and FIR No. 859 registered in 2018, the petitioner had been associated as a witness only.

10.3.2022 : Petitioner found to be involved and arrested : Statement of petitioner was recorded on various occasions by the respondent/ED and thereafter upon finding his direct involvement and that he is a beneficiary of crores of rupees, arrested the petitioner on 10.03.2022 after recording his statement and produced before the court on 11.03.2022 and since then he is in custody and at present confined in jail at Ambala, Haryana.

7.5.2022 : Supplementary challan filed and petitioner arrayed as an accused : While the petitioner initially had been cited just as a witness at the time of presentation of complaint against co-accused Radhe Shyam, Bansi Lal an