Ancestral property not immune from attachment under PMLA, rules Delhi HC 

The Delhi High Court on Monday held that ancestral property can be attached under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), observing that the Act “does not carve out an exception for ancestral or inherited properties.”

A division bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Ravinder Dudeja was dealing with a plea filed by one Arun Suri, an accused in a 2015 money laundering case.

Suri was challenging a November 2025 attachment order by the appellate tribunal — under the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators (Forfeiture of Property) Act, 1976 — which had refused to interfere with his ancestral property attached by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The bench, however, upheld the tribunal’s order, affirming the provisional attachment of Suri’s ancestral property in Northwest Delhi’s Pitampura by the ED.

According to the ED, Suri allegedly opened front firms in the names of his employees and other individuals of limited financial means — including a motor mechanic and a tea vendor — by using their identities solely to remit money outside India under the guise of payments made for the import of software, with no such actual import. In 2017, a provisional attachment order was passed attaching nine properties held by Suri, valued at a total of Rs 17.52 crore.

Among the attached properties was a house at Sainik Vihar in Pitampura, owned jointly by Suri and his mother and valued at Rs 5.18 crore. The attachment of this property was limited to 50% of its value, amounting to Rs 2.59 crore.

Suri argued that the ancestral property had been purchased in 1991 by his father — long before the alleged offence — and therefore could not be counted as ill-gotten gains or proceeds of crime. He also claimed that he had never contributed any amount toward the acquisition of the property.

The ED, however, countered that the proceeds of crime acquired by Suri in the form of foreign exchange had been remitted abroad and were no longer traceable, and that Suri’s properties — including the ancestral property — had accordingly been attached as “equivalent value.”

The court, while upholding the ED’s decision, relied on past Delhi HC judgments to reason that when the enforcement agency “is unable to discover the tainted property, it may proceed to attach even an untainted property equivalent in value.”

“The plea of the property being ancestral does not ipso facto grant immunity from attachment under the PMLA. The statute does not carve out an exception for ancestral or inherited properties, and thus, they are not immune from attachment. The argument that ancestral property cannot be attached unless purchased from illicit funds, is misconceived and contrary to the scheme of PMLA,” the bench ruled.

Sohini Ghosh is a Senior Correspondent at The Indian Express. Prev... Read More