Rajinder Singh Chadha Vs Union of India & Ors. (Delhi High Court)
Summary: The Delhi High Court considered whether Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) No. ECIR/09/HIU/2019 could continue after the two predicate FIRs on which it had initially proceeded were respectively compounded and quashed, when a third FIR concerning the same real-estate project was subsequently registered and taken on record in the existing ECIR. The petitioner relied principally on Vijay Madanlal Choudhary & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors. to contend that, once the scheduled offences ceased to exist, proceedings under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 could not survive. The Enforcement Directorate argued that FIR No. 55/2023, registered during pendency of the writ petition on similar allegations concerning the same project, constituted a subsisting scheduled offence and could validly be taken on record in the existing ECIR.
The Court held that the settled proposition remained that, in the absence of a scheduled offence, there can be no offence of money laundering in relation to that offence. Consequently, PMLA proceedings could not continue insofar as they related to FIR No. 16/2018, which had been compounded with the accused acquitted, and FIR No. 49/2021, which had been quashed. At the same time, the Court emphasized the distinction between an FIR under the CrPC and an ECIR under the PMLA. Relying on Vijay Madanlal Choudhary, it noted that an ECIR is an internal document of the Enforcement Directorate and is not a statutory equivalent of an FIR. Therefore, there was no legal impediment to the Directorate taking the subsequently registered FIR No. 55/2023 on record in the same ECIR where that FIR concerned alleged scheduled offences relating to the same project and transaction framework.
