ED prefers appeal against acquittal of ‘Kadukuthu’ Ravi from money laundering case
The case had been booked for alleged payout of ₹74.47 lakh to conceal his name from a murder case and for accumulation of assets worth ₹6.12 crore
A Division Bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and V. Sivagnanam has ordered notice returnable by two weeks to the former history-sheeter.
The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) has preferred an appeal before the Madras High Court against the acquittal of ‘Kadukuthu’ Ravi alias R. Ravi from a money laundering case booked against him for having allegedly paid ₹74.47 lakh to conceal his name from a murder case besides accumulating wealth to the tune of ₹6.12 crore through various criminal activities.
A Division Bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and V. Sivagnanam has ordered notice returnable by two weeks to the former history-sheeter. The appeal had been preferred against Chennai Principal Sessions Judge S. Alli’s April 18, 2023 verdict refusing to convict and punish him under Sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) of 2002.
According to the ED, gangster M. Kathiravan was murdered close to his house at Saligramam in Chennai on March 21, 2013. The K.K. Nagar police booked the murder case and during investigation, they found that Ravi’s wife R. Banumathi had paid ₹74.47 lakh to M. Prabhakaran and M. Kousalya, elder brother and mother of the deceased, for not implicating her husband in the crime.
Hence, the ED had registered an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) against Ravi under the PMLA in April 2013 and began probing into his other properties. The investigation revealed that he had accumulated eight immovable properties worth ₹6.12 crore. It attached the properties after arriving at the conclusion that they were proceeds of his criminal activities since 1991.
However, on appreciation of evidence, the principal sessions judge held that the ED had miserably failed to prove that ₹74,47,700 actually belonged to Ravi who had disowned it. The judge pointed out that the money had not been recovered from Ravi’s residence to draw a presumption that it might belong to him. Instead, it had been recovered from the house of the deceased, she said.
The judge also said the elder brother of the deceased had made inconsistent statements regarding the money. At one point of time, he had claimed that Ravi’s wife had given the money to him on March 23, 2013 and the police seized it on the same day. In another instance, he had stated that he informed the police about the payout only after a few days and it was seized on March 30, 2013.
On the contrary, Krishnan, serving as Assistant Director in the ED, had deposed that the money was recovered on the basis of the confession made by Vadakarai alias Venkatesan and Johnson who were the co-accused in the murder case. The ED, for reasons best known, had not examined Ravi’s mother as a witness and did not produce the two black polythene bags in which the money was recovered, the judge had said.
As per the dictum laid down by the Supreme Court in the famous Vijay Madanlal Choudhary’s case, considered to be the best authority on PMLA, the ED must first establish the foundational facts of a case before the burden of disproving them could be shifted on the accused. In the present case, the prosecution had miserably failed to establish the foundational facts, the judge had concluded.
She had gone ahead to state that the subsequent revelation of Ravi having accumulated assets worth ₹6.12 crore and they too being the proceeds of his criminal activities could also not be accepted because the ED had failed to get additional charges framed against him. “It is not fair on the part of the prosecution and the court to proceed against the accused… without providing sufficient opportunity to defend himself,” she had said.
The judge had also recorded Ravi’s submission that he had been acquitted in 19 out of 21 criminal cases booked against him and that none of those cases involved any monetary transactions. The ED had neither rebutted the submission nor produced evidence to prove involvement of monetary transactions in those criminal cases to arrive at a conclusion of proceeds of crime having been laundered, the judge added.
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