PMLA case after conviction for predicate offence doesn't amount to second trial: HC
Eleven people were convicted for looting and cheating others of several lakhs of rupees in 2016, in the guise of exchanging demonetised notes. A trial court sentenced them to six years in 2024. Their appeals against that conviction are still pending before the Karnataka High Court.
Then came a second case, this one under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. They went to the High Court and said it was the same crime being tried over again.
Now here is why this matters. The Court said no, and the reason is worth holding. The first crime punishes the act itself — the cheating, the looting. Laundering punishes what was done with the money afterwards: hiding it, moving it, dressing it up as clean. Two different offences, even though the second could not exist without the first.
The words the Court leaned on sit in Section 300 of the Criminal Procedure Code. It bars a second trial for the same offence. Not the same episode, not the same facts — the same offence. A prosecution for a distinct offence under another enactment falls outside that bar altogether.
So the PMLA case goes ahead. The eleven must come out clean in a full trial before the special court, and Justice M. Nagaprasanna dismissed their petitions.
Where this sits
- GS2Structure, organisation and functioning of the judiciary
- GS3Money laundering and its prevention
Points discussed
The question
One conviction for the original crime under the IPC, and then a case under the PMLA on the same money. Is that punishing a person twice for the same thing?
Not a second trial
The prosecution under the PMLA is neither a second trial for the same offence nor a constitutional transgression, the Court held. The PMLA offence derives its existence from the laundering of proceeds of crime, though it emanates from the predicate offence.
Section 300 CrPC
bars a second trial for the same offence only. It does not bar a prosecution for a distinct offence under another enactment. That one line dismissed the petitions.
One offence, one trial
Double jeopardy has never meant one crime, one case. Two different offences arising from a single episode may both be tried.
"The same offence"
Three words carry the whole judgment. Read them closely and the logic falls into place — a PMLA case can run alongside an ordinary criminal case.
You have seen this before
We covered the PMLA machinery in detail — proceeds of crime as property derived directly or indirectly from a scheduled offence, the scheduled offences themselves, attachment of property, and why the whole Act turns on that dependence. Today asks something new of it: whether a PMLA case can follow a conviction for the predicate offence at all.
PMLA and India's Fugitive Recovery Framework5 Aug 2026PremiumSummary and analysis are written by The Insight Express and reviewed before publishing. We link to the original report; we do not reproduce it.