PFI PMLA Case: SC Rejects Transfer Of Case From UP To Kerala

The Supreme Court recently dismissed the plea of PFI General Secretary’s request that the money laundering case against him be transferred from Lucknow to Kerala.

A division bench of Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice Pankaj Mithal dismissed a transfer petition filed by the General Secretary of Campus Front of India (CFI), KA Rauf Sherif, seeking the transfer of a money laundering case from the special PMLA court in Lucknow to the special PMLA court in Ernakulam, Kerala.

“The Special Court, PMLA, Lucknow cannot be said to be lacking in territorial jurisdiction to entertain the complaint. In any case, the lack of jurisdiction of a Court to entertain a complaint can be no ground to order its transfer. A congenital defect of lack of jurisdiction, assuming that it exists, inures to the benefit of the accused and hence it need not be cured at the instance of the accused to his detriment,” the bench directed.

Advocate S Nagamuthu, appearing for the petitioner, contended that the proceedings before the Special Court, Lucknow, are without jurisdiction because all of the criminal activities alleged by the prosecution occurred in Kerala.

It was also pointed out that twelve of the seventeen witnesses named in the prosecution complaint dated February 6, 2021, nine of the fourteen witnesses named in the supplementary complaint dated May 6, 2022, and five of the nine witnesses named in the combined prosecution complaint dated November 18, 2022 are from Kerala or South India.

Furthermore, the petitioner was lawfully remanded to custody by a special judge in Ernakulam under Section 167(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), and thus the filing of the prosecution complaint in Lucknow is illegal.

As a result, the Court determined that it would be incorrect to assert that the Special PMLA Court in Lucknow lacks jurisdiction in the present case.

The division bench stated that the fact that the majority of the accused and witnesses are from Kerala or south India cannot be used to order the transfer of investigation.

The petitioner’s argument that he was remanded to custody under Section 167(2) CrPC by the special judge in Ernakulam and thus the special judge in Lucknow has no jurisdiction was rejected by the Court.

In this regard, the Court emphasized the timeline of events in which the petitioner was arrested in Kerala and thus produced before a Magistrate in Kerala, who remanded him in judicial custody.

Following that, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed an application for ED custody before the Principal Sessions Judge in Ernakulam under Section 167 CrPC.

As a result, while emphasizing that an order under Section 167(2) CrPC had to be passed by the Magistrate to whom an accused person is forwarded, the Court concluded that there are no legally valid and justifiable grounds to order complaint transfer.