Valsad: One of Mumbai’s leading real estate personalities Mr Babulal Varma, promoter of Omkar Realtors & Developers and a leading businessman hailing from Gujarat’s Valsad district has been cleared of any wrongdoing in a money laundering case filed by Enforcement Directorate.
A special court in Mumbai on Wednesday made its interim order absolute and discharged Omkar Group promoter noting that if there is no scheduled offence, the proceedings under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) cannot continue. The judgement citing Supreme Court guideline emphasised that crimanility in regards to money laundering does not exist which is crystal clear and as such detention is absolutely without any legal basis or justification.
Varma, a second generation entrepreneur with major business interests in Gujarat spanning realty, logistics & warehousing, hailing from an ordinary family from Umbergaon (Gujarat) moved to Mumbai in 2002 and in a short span of 15 years rose to become the leading developer in India’s prime real estate market achieving the distinction of building and delivering the highest volume of rehabilitation homes besides internationally acclaimed luxury housing projects in Mumbai with some of them being tallest residential towers in India. His company Omkar Group is credited with rehabilitating more than 75,000 slum dwellers across Mumbai region under the Maharashtra government’s Slum Rehabilitation scheme. And under Omkar Foundation, company’s CSR initiative, he is credited with implementing a series of social projects for weaker sections of the society in Mumbai, Jaipur and Gujarat regions. The company is now set to deliver world’s tallest rehab residential tower located at Mahalaxmi in Mumbai which will rehabilitate more than 8,000 slum dwellers.
In Jan 2021, he was detained by Enforcement Directorate in a PMLA case along with this partner Mr Kamal Gupta. His company Omkar Group, despite his detention, continued to carry on operations successfully across multiple mega residential projects with the unstinted support of country’s top financial institutions and leading joint venture partners including L&T, Piramal, Godrej.
On Wednesday, while discharging him from the case, Special Judge, M G Deshpande, had emphasised in his judgement that “It is crystal clear that if there is no scheduled/predicate offence, the PMLA case cannot continue. Similarly, the PMLA court cannot have the jurisdiction to continue a PMLA case in the absence of a case relating to the scheduled offence. The guidelines of the honourable Supreme Court…are very clear. This court has no jurisdiction to extend judicial custody of the accused under PMLA when there is no scheduled offence”. This is one of the first such decisions following the Supreme Court’s recent order upholding the constitutionality of PMLA.
The Supreme Court in its significant order on PMLA last month has observed that if a person is absolved by a court in the scheduled offence filed against him, there can be no separate action for money-laundering against such a person.
