On 12 May 2023, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court set aside a Telangana High Court order granting bail in a Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 matter and remitted the bail applications for fresh consideration. The Court held that the investigation of the predicate (scheduled) offence and the Enforcement Directorate's investigation of the money-laundering offence are separate and distinct, and that the mere filing of a charge-sheet in the predicate offence is no ground to grant bail under the PMLA while the ED investigation is still ongoing — a rare Enforcement-Directorate-favourable, bail-cancellation ratio in the post-Vijay Madanlal line. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal frame, and where it sits against the pro-liberty cases.
On 27 August 2024 the Supreme Court granted bail to K. Kavitha in the Delhi excise-policy money-laundering case, holding that the first proviso to Section 45(1) PMLA — which relaxes the twin bail conditions for a woman — cannot be denied merely because the woman is highly educated, sophisticated, or a Member of Parliament or Legislative Assembly. The Court found the Delhi High Court had misread Saumya Chaurasia to confine the proviso to 'vulnerable women'. A digest of the pro-applicant pole of the s.45 proviso debate, the excise-policy context, and how it pairs against the restrictive discretionary reading.
On 23 November 2017, a two-judge bench of Justices R.F. Nariman and Sanjay Kishan Kaul struck down the twin conditions for bail in Section 45(1) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, as unconstitutional — violative of Articles 14 and 21. The Court held that tethering the bail fetter to the punishment threshold of the Part-A scheduled offence, rather than to the money-laundering offence itself, was a classification with no rational nexus to the object of the Act. This is the doctrinal origin of the whole twin-conditions saga; a 2018 amendment recast the provision, and Vijay Madanlal Choudhary (2022) later upheld the revived form. A digest of the holding, the ratio on Articles 14 and 21, and why the strike-down remains the reference point everything since is measured against.
On 14 December 2023 the Supreme Court refused PMLA bail to Saumya Chaurasia, holding that the words 'may be' in the first proviso to Section 45(1) make the relaxed-bail benefit for a woman discretionary — to be extended only after weighing the extent of her involvement and the nature of the evidence — and cautioning counsel against inaccurate representations in special leave petitions.
On 13 February 2025 the Supreme Court set aside a Patna High Court order granting PMLA bail by a cryptic order, holding that the Section 45 twin conditions are mandatory, that a bail court must record its satisfaction on them in a reasoned order, and that Section 50 statements are not barred by Article 20(3) at the bail stage. A digest of the holding and where it sits in the PMLA bail line.
The Supreme Court set aside the CCI's order keeping its 2019 approval of the Amazon–Future Coupons deal in abeyance and its ₹202-crore penalty. It held that Section 45(2) of the Competition Act — a penalty provision for false statements or omissions — cannot be read as a freestanding power to nullify, suspend, or re-open a concluded approval granted under Section 31(1).
The Jharkhand High Court granted regular bail in a money-laundering case, finding the Section 45 PMLA twin conditions satisfied — there was reason to believe the petitioner was not guilty and unlikely to reoffend on bail.
On 13 December 2000, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Justice D.P. Mohapatra authoring, with Chief Justice B.N. Kirpal on the panel — set out the foundational architecture for repudiation of a life-insurance policy under the second part of Section 45 of the Insurance Act 1938. The judgment held that after the two-year incontestability window, an insurer can repudiate only by establishing cumulatively that the impugned statement was on a material matter, that the suppression was fraudulent, and that the policyholder knew at the time of making the statement that it was false. The burden is a heavy one; mere inaccuracy is not enough.
On 24 April 2019, a two-judge bench of Justices Dr D.Y. Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta restored an insurer's repudiation of a life policy because the proposer had failed to disclose an existing Rs.11 lakh Max New York Life policy taken nine weeks earlier. The judgment, authored by Chandrachud J, holds that the existence of prior policies is a material fact bearing on aggregate risk concentration; because death and repudiation both fell within the two-year window, the pre-2015 second proviso to Section 45 of the Insurance Act 1938 had not yet attached, and the insurer needed only to establish materiality — not fraud.
On 27 July 2022, a three-judge bench led by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar upheld substantially all the contested provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 — the arrest power under Section 19, the provisional attachment power under Section 5, the search-and-seizure architecture under Section 17, the reverse-burden provision under Section 24, and the twin bail conditions under Section 45. The judgment also held that an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) is not equivalent to an FIR and need not be supplied to the accused. A digest of the holdings, the doctrinal contributions, and the review now pending.