Shweta Tambade
The Allahabad High Court has recently rejected bail to the Managing Director of the Amrapali Group of companies – Anil Kumar Sharma, in the case filed against him for offences committed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002 (Section 3 and 4).
He was accused under section 439 of CrPC read with section 45 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act or PMLA 2002.
Justice Dinesh Kumar Singh considered it to be unsuitable to release Kumar on bail, considering the Supreme Court’s order of July 2019, in which his alleged involvement in the offence had been thoroughly pointed out, his conduct before the Supreme Court and noted that the investigation was still incomplete and money trail yet to be completely undiscovered.
In July, the bail application before the Sessions Court PMLA, Lucknow was rejected.
While discovering the scam that duped home-buyers, the High Court told that the Supreme Court was dependent on the findings of the Forensic Auditors to conclude that there was a prima facie violation of FEMA and other dishonest activities of money laundering.
Therefore, the apex court had instructed the Enforcement Directorate to investigate the case and fix liability on persons liable for the scam.
The High Court also observed Kumar has also committed many serious economic offences.
“This case is one of the classic cases which would reveal the true story that how a real estate company/builder in active connivance and collaboration with the financial institution, government authorities and functionaries can defraud, cheat, dishonestly misappropriate and diverted the funds to the extent of thousand crores collected from home/flat buyers and shatter their cherished dream to have their own house, a dream of every middle call person of this country and leave them completely high and dry,” the order reads.
For the Supreme Court’s intervention, the High Court pointed out that thousands of flat buyers would have been left abandoned by the promoters of the Amrapali Group of Companies.
Kumar was described as the ‘chief’ of the fraud, cheating, diversion of funds, and money-laundering allegedly involved in the case.
The Judge observed further,
“It is well settled that economic offences constitute a class apart and need to be visited with a different approach in the matter of bail. While granting bail, the court has to keep in mind the nature of accusations, magnitude, and gravity of offence and nature of evidence in support of the accusations.”
The order was passed by the Special Judge, considering the nature of the accusation and the severity of the offence.
The punishment was provided for the offence on the basis that the investigation had been going on qua other accused and given that the scam allegedly involves a huge amount of Rs. 6,000 Crores, the bail application was rejected.
Advocates Manoj Singh, Pranshu Agarwal, and Mohd. Yasir Abbasi represented the accused-applicant, and Advocate Shiv P Shukla appeared for the Enforcement Directorate.
The Amrapali group has also been alleged to have failed in making repayments to financial institutions.
The SC has entertained the petition filed under Article 32 of the Constitution of India as a huge number of people were involved in the case the Supreme Court, therefore, refused the plea for bail and rejected the application.