The Bombay High Court has set aside the continued attachment of properties worth Rs 25 crore belonging to entities associated with Pune businessman Avinash Bhosale, holding that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) failed to establish a link between the properties and alleged proceeds of crime, Live Law reported.

A bench of Justices A.S. Gadkari and Kamal Khata was hearing cross-appeals against an April 1, 2026 order of the Appellate Tribunal in New Delhi, which had continued the provisional attachment. The properties are a 6,143.71 square metre land parcel in Pune owned by Samit Realty Private Limited and a 20,200 square metre land parcel in Nagpur owned by Gauri Bhosale. Avinash Bhosale, Samit Realty and Gauri Bhosale challenged the continued attachment, while the ED filed a separate appeal contesting the release of the properties.

ED's allegations, and why the court rejected the link

According to the ED's complaint, alleged proceeds of crime amounting to Rs 3,983 crore originated from YES Bank through investments in and disbursements to Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL). The ED alleged that Bhosale and entities associated with him received Rs 164.64 crore in alleged proceeds of crime through transactions involving Nibhodh Realty, consultancy agreements and ABIL Dairy. Bhosale and the other appellants had been named as accused in the ED's third supplementary chargesheet; the allegations remain the ED's claims and are denied through the appellants' challenge.

On Nibhodh Realty, the court noted it had invested Rs 237.50 crore in Sanjay Chhabria's company under three debenture subscription agreements between October 2014 and July 2015 at 18% annual interest, and that the ED's own calculations totalled Rs 794.81 crore including repayments, principal, interest and processing fees; after deducting Rs 766 crore allegedly repayable, the balance was Rs 28.81 crore. The bench found no basis for the ED's claim that Rs 67.85 crore constituted proceeds of crime, and held the repayments had no established link to funds disbursed by YES Bank in 2018.

On the consultancy transaction, the court held the ED had failed to establish that Rs 71.82 crore allegedly received under consultancy agreements was proceeds of crime, noting Rs 47.52 crore was disbursed before YES Bank extended its loan to DHFL on April 12, 2018. On ABIL, it held the Rs 25 crore paid by Sanjay Chhabria could not be treated as proceeds of crime merely because the balance was paid in 2019, since the payment arose from a dairy business sale agreement executed in 2016, under which 50% had already been paid in January 2016 — a point Mirror Now also highlighted in its report of the ruling.

"In our view, each transaction was an independent transaction with an independent corporate entity and none of them is, by any stretch of the imagination, illegal. We find there is no nexus between them," the bench held, adding: "These are official banking transactions and cannot be construed as proceeds of crime." It observed that the ED's investigation was based on an erroneous premise, dismissed the ED's appeal and allowed Bhosale's appeal.