HC Grants Relief in High-Profile Counterfeit Drug Case

The case emanated from a sensational ED investigation into an alleged multimillion rupee scam relating to the production and marketing of spurious life-saving chemotherapeutic agents such as Keytruda and Opdyta. The proceedings under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) had been commenced in light of a predicate FIR containing charges of cheating, forgery, and criminal conspiracy, among others.

Various accused persons, namely, Pravez Khan, Neeraj Chauhan, and Gajendra Singh, among others, had been arrested for the purposes of investigating their possible involvement in the supply, finance, and overall administration of the syndicate. The accused sought regular bail on the grounds of their noninvolvement in money laundering and a long period of incarceration without any imminent completion of the proceedings.

Issue Before Court: Whether the accused satisfies Section 45 PMLA twin conditions for bail in a counterfeit drug-linked money laundering case?

HC Decided: Regular bail has been granted to all the petitioners on the ground that both the conditions mentioned in Section 45 of PMLA have been met in this case. According to the Court, the ED has been unable to prove a link between the alleged proceeds of crime and the relevant financial transactions by the accused persons. Moreover, some of the accused persons played only a peripheral role as either an employee or any other facilitator and did not control the operation itself.

In view of the right to speedy trial under Article 21, it is unlawful to keep a person in jail unnecessarily where there is no prospect of trial in the immediate future. With regard to statutory requirements, the court opined that there were sufficient reasons to believe that the accused persons were not likely to commit any offence, as they may not even commit the offence of money laundering in the instant case.

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