The Delhi High Court has dismissed the ED’s ECIR against India Bulls Housing and Its Employees.

The high court also set aside the Lookout Circulars (LOC) issued against those employees in an order issued on Monday and stated that there would be no search, seizure, or summons arising from the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR).

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has quashed the Enforcement Directorate’s ECIR against India bulls Housing Finance Ltd. and several of its employees, ordering that no further coercive action be taken against them in a case where the FIR was already quashed by the Bombay High Court.

The high court also set aside the Lookout Circulars (LOC) issued against those employees and stated that no search, seizure, or summons will be issued as a result of the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR).

Concerning the accused’s challenge to certain provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the high court bench of Justices Mukta Gupta and Anish Dayal stated that the Supreme Court had already decided it in an earlier judgement.

Referring to the Supreme Court decision, the high court stated,”… this court finds no reason for the said ECIR to be sustained against them, in the absence of any evidence of a predicate offence or an FIR against them that is in existence or is legally alive.”

The high court was hearing a number of petitions filed by India bulls Housing Finance Ltd (IHFL), India bulls Asset Management Company Ltd, and several of their employees challenging the ECIR filed by the ED and the subsequent proceedings.

They claimed that the ED had arraigned them in the ECIR despite the fact that no underlying predicate offence had been registered against them. According to them, the Bombay High Court has already quashed the FIR registered at Maharashtra’s Palghar police station in relation to the alleged predicate offence based on a complaint by one of the shareholders that he suffered losses as a result of the devaluation of his shares as a result of suspected money-laundering and misdealing by IHFL.

The high court stated that once the predicate order under section 156(3) CrPC and the FIR was quashed, there would be no residue in the matter against the accused regarding the allegations made in the complaint and crystallised in the FIR. “In all of these cases, both of the employees against whom no complaint was ever filed for the scheduled offences and those against whom a complaint was filed and was subsequently quashed by a court of competent jurisdiction,” it said.