In a major legal reprieve for retired IAS officer and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Secretary Mr. M Gopal Reddy, the Supreme Court has dismissed a Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which had challenged a Telangana High Court order that had exonerated him from money laundering proceedings linked to the 2019 e-tendering scam.
This Supreme Court ruling also brings relief to businessman Mr. M S Raju of the Mantena Group, whose name was linked to the same allegations concerning manipulated tenders in Madhya Pradesh. “We see no reason to interfere with the High Court’s order,” the Supreme Court noted while rejecting the ED’s appeal.
In 2023, the Telangana High Court had granted full relief to both Mr. Reddy and Mr. Raju by dismissing the ED’s proceedings. The High Court held that the ED had no concrete evidence to justify continuation of the money laundering probe. The allegations stemmed from an FIR filed by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Bhopal, which accused several individuals and companies of tampering with the state’s e-tendering platform to manipulate bids worth over Rs. 80,000 crore using forged digital signatures. The Mantena Group, led by Mr. Raju, was among the firms scrutinized.
Though Mr. Reddy was named in the EOW’s final report, his lawyers emphasized that he was never directly accused in the case. Furthermore, all individuals named in the EOW’s FIR were acquitted by a Bhopal court in November 2022 due to lack of evidence — an acquittal that remained unchallenged.
The Telangana High Court ruled that in the absence of a predicate offence, a money laundering case cannot be pursued. Justice M Laxman, while quashing the ED proceedings against Mr. Raju, observed that the agency’s actions were bordering on an “abuse of process,” stressing that mere suspicion was insufficient to proceed with charges under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The ED’s case suffered further setbacks when CERT-In, the government’s cybersecurity agency assisting with the digital forensics, concluded that no additional incriminating data could be retrieved from the seized devices. This prompted the EOW to file a closure report.
The alleged e-tendering scam, which came to light in 2019, had emerged following internal disputes within the Madhya Pradesh bureaucracy. Then-Chief Minister Mr. Shivraj Singh Chouhan had ordered an inquiry after irregularities were reported, resulting in the cancellation of nine tenders.
With the Supreme Court’s ruling, Mr. Reddy stands fully cleared of the allegations, marking a significant development in a case that had drawn national attention.
