A special court on Wednesday discharged NCP (SP) MLA Rohit Pawar, a firm linked to former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar’s relatives, and 15 others in the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank case filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
While the detailed order is yet to be made available, the discharge follows the closure of the predicate offence filed by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the police in February.
ED named Rohit and 16 others, including agro and sugar firms, in its chargesheets filed between 2023 and 2025, linking them to the alleged acquisition of sugar mills at an undervalued price and claiming this caused losses to the bank.
As per the law, if a predicate offence is closed, the linked money laundering case cannot continue.
“Admittedly, there is no scheduled offence as against the applicant (Pawar) in view of the closure report filed by the police, which was accepted by the court… There being no predicate offence, i.e. scheduled offence, the impugned ECIR registered by the Directorate of Enforcement will not survive… Thus, in the instant case, FIR stands closed by judicial process i.e. by closure report, which amounts to an acquittal. Now the proceeding of ECIR does not survive against applicant/accused no.15 Rohit Rajendra Pawar. Hence, on these legal grounds, applicant is entitled to get discharge,” Special Judge Mahesh Jadhav said.
On February 27, the special court allowed the closure reports filed by the EOW in 2020 and 2024, closing the case against all those probed, including Ajit Pawar and companies linked to his wife Sunetra Pawar, who is now a deputy chief minister.
Based on this, Rohit and others sought discharge from the case, stating that since the predicate offence was closed, the ED case could not continue. ED had said the court could decide the case based on its merits.
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ED also informed the court that statements recorded by Rohit Pawar and others under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act reflect their guilt and intention. It also said that since Rohit was not named as an accused in the EOW case, he cannot be given the benefit of the closure of that case.
But the court said that there was no substance in this argument as the law is clear that the offence of money laundering cannot survive as a standalone one when the predicate offence is closed.
In its reply to the plea, ED said it had filed a prosecution complaint (chargesheet) and three supplementary chargesheets between 2023 and 2025 against 17 accused. It also said it had shared information regarding “discrepancies and monetary transactions” with the EOW.
ED petition pending in Bombay HC
ED also said that in 2020, when the EOW first filed a closure report in the case, it had sought to intervene to oppose the report, but the application was rejected.
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A petition against this rejection is pending before the Bombay High Court. In 2022, when the EOW filed a closure report for the second time, too, ED sought to intervene, but the court rejected its attempt.
The ED case marks the end of the probe into the MSCB case, which was initiated following the high court’s directions in 2019. The probe was into allegations that cooperative banks in the state had, from 2007 to 2011, disbursed large amounts of loans to sugar companies without government guarantees and collateral securities, even after they turned non-performing assets, and that they were then sold to companies linked to the directors of the banks at low prices, causing losses to the Government.
“The violation of any conditions by the bank or its employees is certainly covered into the civil wrong. There is no prior meeting of minds or agreement between the directors to do an illegal action by illegal means. Mere irregularity or lapses cannot be converted to offences. There is absence of dishonest or fraudulent intention on the part of the accused,” Special Judge Mahesh K Jadhav had said while accepting the closure report.
The court also said the documentary evidence, witness statements and official statutory reports did not demonstrate any cognisable offence.
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After he was named in the chargesheet in 2025, Rohit said he was being targeted, insisting that due process had been followed in the transaction related to Baramati Agro Pvt Ltd, where he is a director. He insisted that the tender had been issued and that the sugar mill had been under the control of an administrator, not a board of directors, at the time of the auction.
The others discharged include former MP Prasad Tanpure and his son Prajakt Tanpure, a former MLA.
