In a criminal appeal challenging the Karnataka High Court’s decision on an application under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, seeking to quash a complaint filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under Section 45(1) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, the court addressed a crucial point.
The court emphasized that for the offense under Section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code to become a scheduled offense under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the criminal conspiracy must be to commit an offense already listed in the PMLA Schedule.
Applying this principle to the case at hand, the court ruled that the accused cannot be prosecuted under Section 3 of the PMLA because there is no allegation of a criminal conspiracy to commit any of the offenses included in the PMLA Schedule.
