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Kerala High Court Denies Anticipatory Bail to Cashew Dealer Aneesh Babu in Money-Laundering Probe

The judge said the PMLA twin-conditions standard left no grounds to grant pre-arrest relief.

Overview

  • Justice Kauser Edappagath found a prima facie money-laundering case, citing the need for custodial interrogation and the risk of witness influence.
  • The Enforcement Directorate alleges he duped multiple people through imported cashew and job offers, with about Rs 25.52 crore treated as proceeds of crime.
  • Investigators say Rs 2.03 crore was credited to his bank account by complainants and was not remitted overseas for imports as he claimed.
  • The court relied on Supreme Court rulings in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary and M. Gopal Reddy to apply the Section 45 twin conditions to pre-arrest bail.
  • Babu maintains he is falsely implicated as a counter-blast to his complaint that prompted a VACB case against an ED officer, and his plea had earlier been rejected by the Sessions Court.