New Delhi, Sep 25 The trial in a money laundering case against Jharkhand IAS officer Pooja Singhal would continue as the Supreme Court on Friday refused to quash a trial court order taking cognisance of the offence against her.
Additional Solicitor General S V Raju, appearing for the Enforcement Directorate (ED), told a bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana that the cognisance of the offence was taken a long time ago.
Senior advocate Meenakshi Arora, appearing for Singhal, said that sanction to prosecute an administrative officer as provided under Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) was not granted in this case.
Section 197 of CrPC says, “When any person who is or was a judge or magistrate or a public servant not removable from his office save by or with the sanction of the government, is accused of any offence alleged to have been committed by him while acting or purporting to act in the discharge of his official duty, no court shall take cognisance of such offence except with the previous sanction…”
Arora said when the objection with regard to non-grant of sanction was taken, the ED argued that under the new law, Bhartiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), there was a provision of “automatic deemed sanction”.
She said Singhal was not an accused in the corruption case, and so far as the money laundering case is concerned, she was acting in her official capacity.
Justice Bagchi said more than Rs 19 crore was recovered from Singhal.
Refusing to grant any relief at the moment, the bench said the grant of sanction is a mixed question of law and fact, and it has to be ascertained whether the officer was discharging her official functions when the alleged offence took place.
“We would like to keep the issue of sanction open to be adjudicated along with other evidence at the appropriate stage of the proceeding,” the bench said.
The ED arrested Singhal, a former Jharkhand mines department secretary, on May 11, 2022, following raids at properties linked to her in connection with an alleged scam worth Rs 18 crore in the implementation of MGNREGA, the Centre’s flagship rural employment scheme at the time.
The suspension of the 2000-batch IAS officer, who was in jail for more than two years, was revoked after she secured bail.
She had filed a petition in the Jharkhand High Court seeking quashing of the cognisance order by a PMLA court in Ranchi dated July 19, 2022, in connection with ECIR Case 3 of 2018.
She had submitted that cognisance of the offences under sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) was taken without adhering to the mandatory requirement of sanction under Section 197 of the CrPC, 1973.
The high court had dismissed Singhal’s plea, ruling that prior sanction under Section 197 of the CrPC was not required for prosecution in cases involving personal “illegal acts”.
In July 2022, the ED filed a chargesheet against multiple accused, including Singhal, her husband Abhishek Jha, their chartered accountant Suman Kumar, junior engineer Ram Binod Sinha, assistant engineer Rajendra Jain, and executive engineers Jai Kishore Choudhary and Sashi Prakash.
(PTI News)
