Last Updated on February 25, 2023 by Administrator
What:
A bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and PK Chavan of the Bombay Court quashes ECIR against Naresh Goyal in money laundering case
Facts:
The Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the money laundering case against Jet Airlines founder Naresh Goyal was overturned by the Bombay High Court on Thursday.
The ECIR dated February 20, 2020, the investigation, and all proceedings and actions stemming from the ECIR against Goyal were all invalidated by a division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and PK Chavan on the grounds that they were unlawful and unconstitutional.
The ruling was reached in response to applications Naresh Goyal, the founder of Jet Airlines, and his wife Anita Goyal sought to have the ECIR nullified.
On the strength of a first information report (FIR) submitted by the Mumbai police in February 2020 in response to a complaint made by Akbar Tours, the ECIR against Goyals was filed.
Naresh and Anita Goyal were charged in the FIR with forgery, criminal conspiracy, and cheating under the Indian Criminal Code (IPC).
The airline firm halted flying operations in October 2018, according to the travel agency, which claimed to have sustained a loss of over 46 crores.
The petition stated that the ECIR had been opened as a result of a complaint made to the Mumbai police in 2018. The petition was submitted through the team at Naik Naik & Co., lead by attorneys Ameet Naik and Abhishek Kale.
The police determined in a closure report they submitted in March 2020 that they had not discovered any merit in the criminal complaint and that the conflict appeared to be civil.
This was approved by a Metropolitan Magistrate Court, and the Supreme Court maintained it in spite of the ED’s objections.
They then filed a motion with the Supreme Court to have the ECIR quashed since the predicate offence was not proven.
The High Court prohibited coercive action against the Goyals in January of this year.
On February 22, the ED contested the plea, claiming that the ECIR could not be invalidated since it was an internal, private “piece of paper” and not a statutory record.
The reply, however, did not impress the Court, and on Wednesday, it was asked what would remain if the planned offence that served as the basis for filing an ECIR had been resolved.
The court had asked ED whether it could quash an ECIR or not, especially in light of the Solicitor General Tushar Mehta’s statement in another case before the Supreme Court that an ECIR by ED would not survive after acceptance of the closure report in the predicate offence. The hearing had been postponed until today.
After hearing from the parties today, the court proceeded to nullify the ECIR.
Written By- Shivank Duseja
