Section 120B of the IPC provides punishment for criminal conspiracy.
New Delhi:
The Supreme Court has dismissed a petition seeking review of its judgment holding that a person cannot be prosecuted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) by invoking Section 120B of the IPC if the alleged criminal conspiracy was not related to a planned offense under the Money Laundering Prevention Act. PMLA.
Section 120B of the IPC provides punishment for criminal conspiracy.
A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal dismissed the petition seeking review of the judgment dated November 29, 2023, which also said that it is not necessary that a person against whom the offense under Section 3 of the PMLA is alleged to have been proven to be the suspect in the planned offence.
“Applications to hear the review petitions before the Public Court are rejected. Delay is condoned. We have read the judgment and order dated November 29, 2023, which sought review. There is no error visible in the record. Even otherwise there is no ground for review. Petitions for review are dismissed,” the court ordered in its recent order.
On November 29, the top court held: “The offense punishable under Section 120B of the IPC will become a scheduled offense only if the alleged conspiracy is to commit an offense specifically included in the Schedule.” In the judgment, the top court had interpreted the provisions of the PMLA and said that while giving effect to the intention of the legislature, if two reasonable interpretations can be given to a particular provision of a criminal law, the court generally interpretation should adopt that the imposition of criminal consequences.
In other words, a milder interpretation of the two should be adopted, the report said.
“The legislative intent that can be inferred from the definition of the scheduled offense under clause (y) of sub-section (1) of section 2 of the PMLA is that any offense capable of generating proceeds of crime need not be a scheduled offense. Therefore, only certain specific violations are included in the schedule,” the report said.
The court had said that allowing criminal conspiracy as a scheduled offense in itself, without any link with the scheduled offense included in the PMLA, would make the scheme “meaningless or redundant”.
“If Section 120B of the IPC can be treated as a standalone offense for the purpose of attracting prosecution under the PMLA, then by that logic a complaint under the PMLA can be filed where the charge relates to a criminal conspiracy to commit a commit a crime that is not a planned crime. ,” it said.
The court had only said that because there is a conspiracy to commit an offense, the same does not become an offense.
“Conspiracy is an agreement between the defendants to commit a criminal offense,” the report said. The addition of the interpretation suggested by the ED will defeat the legislative purpose of designating only a few selected offenses as scheduled offences.
The court held, “It cannot be the intention of the legislature to make every non-listed offense a scheduled offense by applying Section 120B. Therefore, in our opinion, the offense under Section 120B of the IPC , included in Part A of the Schedule, become a scheduled offense only if the criminal conspiracy is to commit an offense already included in Parts A, B or C of the Schedule. The Supreme Court had in November 2023 delivered judgment on an appeal against the order of the Karnataka High Court, which had refused to quash the money laundering case against a woman, who was a former vice-chancellor of Alliance University.
The ED had booked her under the provisions of PMLA by invoking Section 120B of the IPC even though the offenses charged against him were not scheduled offences.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by WhatsNew2Day staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)