4 min readMumbaiUpdated: Apr 16, 2026 09:33 AM IST
Pune-based builder Avinash Bhosale has won partial relief from a money laundering tribunal, which overturned most of the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) seizures of his properties linked to the Yes Bank-DHFL case.
The Appellate Tribunal under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) — the court that hears challenges to ED actions — set aside the bulk of provisional attachments the agency had made against Bhosale in 2022. However, it upheld attachments on properties worth Rs 25 crore that were allegedly received by his entities.
The properties where the attachment stands include a 6,143-square-metre land parcel in Pune, attached for Rs 14.65 crore under the name of Samit Realty, and a 20,200-square-foot land parcel in Nagpur valued at Rs 15.52 crore, registered in the name of his wife, Gauri Bhosale.
The ED had originally seized assets worth over Rs 163 crore. These included a duplex flat in Mumbai worth Rs 102.8 crore; two land parcels in Pune worth Rs 14.65 crore and Rs 29.24 crore respectively; and two land parcels in Nagpur worth Rs 15.52 crore and Rs 1.45 crore respectively.
“We find reason to cause interference in the impugned order for provisional attachment of the properties other than the properties worth Rs 25 crore,” a bench comprising Chairman Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Member G C Mishra held on April 1.
How the case began
The CBI arrested Yes Bank founder Rana Kapoor and DHFL promoters Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan in 2022 for allegedly conspiring to extend financial assistance to DHFL, a housing finance company, in exchange for substantial undue benefits to Kapoor and his family members. Yes Bank, under Kapoor, had invested Rs 3,700 crore into DHFL’s short-term debentures in 2018. Bhosale entered the picture through developer Sanjay Chhabria of the Radius Group. Investigators alleged that DHFL diverted funds to Chhabria under the guise of developing his project called ‘Avenue 54.’ Chhabria then allegedly transferred Rs 431 crore — of which Rs 267 crore moved from April 2018 onwards — to Bhosale, his family, and their entities, including Nibodh Realty LLP.
What Bhosale argued
Bhosale and others argued before the Appellate Tribunal that the transactions with Chhabria were between two independent parties who were not named in the predicate offence — the scheduled crime that gives rise to a money laundering charge — and constituted legitimate commercial dealings, including a 2014 loan agreement and consultancy arrangements.
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Why the tribunal agreed partly
The Tribunal noted that the issue concerned the power of the Investigating Officer to “question the commercial transaction entered between the two parties four years prior to commission of the crime.” The bench found that lawyers for the agencies “could not clarify the power of the IO to examine an agreement to be commercially irrational when no allegation by any of the parties was made for it.” In other words, the ED had labelled the Chhabria-Bhosale deal commercially irrational, but could not show it had the legal authority to make that call, especially when no such allegation existed in either the CBI’s FIR or the ED’s own ECIR — the Enforcement Case Information Report, which is the document that initiates a money laundering investigation.
“The respondents (authorities) have not taken the agreement to be illegal or void but held it to be commercially irrational without showing their authority to draw an inference for it when there was no allegation in the FIR or ECIR,” the Tribunal noted.
The bench further held that “the amount taken to be proceeds of crime” could not be determined based on assumptions, and that the reason for the provisional attachment of that tranche of funds could not be accepted.
