A Special Court under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) at Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Courts on Thursday dropped the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) proceedings in the Sunil High-Tech Engineers Ltd. coal block allocation case, holding that the money laundering case could not survive after the accused had been acquitted in the predicate offence.

Special Judge Dheeraj More passed the order in ED v. Sunil High-Tech Engineers Ltd. & Ors., also directing the release of properties attached by the ED.

Appearing for the accused, Senior Advocate Pramod Kumar Dubey, assisted by Kaushik Moitra and Ambar Bhushan, Partners at Bharucha & Partners, submitted that the accused had already been acquitted on July 13, 2026 in the CBI case concerning the scheduled (predicate) offences. Relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary v. Union of India,2022 SCC OnLine SC 929, the defence argued that once the scheduled offence no longer survived, the PMLA proceedings could not continue.

Advocate Vijay Agarwal, appearing for the remaining accused, also supported the plea for closure of the proceedings.

Appearing for the ED, Special Public Prosecutor Rajesh Batra acknowledged that the accused had been acquitted in the predicate offence and did not dispute the legal position laid down by the Supreme Court in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary. He, however, sought one week’s time to obtain instructions from the Enforcement Directorate.

After considering the submissions and the applicable precedents, the Special Court declined the request for adjournment, dropped the PMLA proceedings against all the accused, and directed that the properties attached by the ED be released.