In an era when even the Supreme Court of India has been bending to the will of the Modi government, it is heartening to see a lower court of India standing firm in defence of the laws of the land both in letter and in spirit. That is what Special Judge Vishal Gogne did at the Rouse Avenue trial court in Delhi on 16 December this year.

The case he dismissed was a charge filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in 2021, that the shareholders of Young Indian—the holding company of Associated Journals Ltd, which publishes this newspaper—had misappropriated funds to the tune of Rs 90.21 crore to gain control of AJL’s substantial fixed assets. This, in the ED’s framing, constituted money laundering. 

Refusing to take cognisance of the ED complaint (chargesheet) against Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and others in the case, Judge Gogne ruled that the complaint was “not maintainable” under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), because an investigation and prosecution under PMLA cannot proceed without a prior FIR (First Information Report) for the underlying scheduled (predicate) offence.

Judge Gogne’s reason for doing so was precise and irrefutable. The original accusation of ‘money laundering’ had been made by a private person—Subramanian Swamy. Swamy’s charge should have been investigated by a government agency, i.e., the CBI. The CBI should then have filed an FIR (First Information Report) submitting its findings to the ED. The Enforcement Directorate would only then have had the authority to start investigating the charge of money laundering against the accused. But the Directorate had not received, nor waited to receive, a report from the CBI, or any other agency designated by it, and filed a case against the accused solely upon the basis of a complaint made by a private person. Rightly therefore, Judge Gogne saw no option but........

© National Herald