New Delhi, Sep 12: The Supreme Court will hear on September 15 a plea by IAS officer Pooja Singhal challenging a Jharkhand High Court order which dismissed her petition seeking quashing of a cognisance order in a money laundering case.
A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana is likely to hear the matter.
Singhal, a former Jharkhand mines department secretary, was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on May 11, 2022, following raids at properties linked to her in connection with an alleged scam worth Rs 18 crore in the implementation of MGNREGA, the Centre’s flagship rural employment scheme.
The suspension of the 2000 batch IAS officer, who was in jail for over two years, was revoked after she secured bail.
She had filed the petition in the high court seeking quashing of the cognisance order by the PMLA court in Ranchi dated July 19, 2022, in connection with ECIR case 03 of 2018.
She had submitted that cognisance of the offences under sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) was taken without adhering to the mandatory requirement of sanction under Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
The high court had dismissed Singhal’s plea, ruling that prior sanction under Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure was not required for prosecution in cases involving personal “illegal acts”.
In July 2022, the ED filed a prosecution complaint against multiple accused, including Singhal, her husband Abhishek Jha, their chartered accountant Suman Kumar, junior engineer Ram Binod Sinha, assistant engineer Rajendra Jain, and executive engineers Jai Kishore Choudhary and Sashi Prakash. (PTI)
