Why Nayan Raheja Must Not Be Granted Bail: The Case From the Court Record

What the High Court is actually being asked

The question before the Delhi High Court is narrower than “jail or no jail.” Nayan N. Raheja has not been arrested. He is asking for anticipatory bail: an order, in advance, that the Enforcement Directorate may not take him into custody in its money-laundering investigation into Raheja Developers Ltd (RDL).

That is an extraordinary remedy. It is granted before the investigator has finished the job, and it shapes how the rest of the investigation can be run. The Saket court that heard him first described it as a “concession” available “only in exceptional circumstances, where the accused is able to showcase that he has been falsely implicated with a view to harass and humiliate him.”

On 19 September 2026, Special Judge (PMLA) Sachin Jain held that he had shown no such thing, and dismissed the application. On 1 October, Justice Amit Bansal of the High Court heard opening arguments on a fresh plea, with the ED opposing.

This article argues that the Saket court was right, on six separate grounds, and that the High Court should reach the same result. It then sets out the strongest case for the other side, because a reader is entitled to both.

Ground one: the law sets a high bar, and a court has found he does not clear it

Bail in a money-laundering case is not governed by the ordinary rules. Section 45 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act imposes two conditions before any court may grant it. The prosecutor must be heard, and the court must be satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for believing the accused is not guilty and is not likely to offend while on bail.

The Supreme Court has held that these conditions apply to anticipatory bail as well. In Directorate of Enforcement v. M. Gopal Reddy, decided on 24 February 2023, Justices M.R. Shah and C.T. Ravikumar ruled that “the rigour of Section 45 of the Act, 2002 shall be applicable even with respect to the application under Section 438 Cr.PC.” They set aside a High Court order that had granted pre-arrest bail by treating a PMLA matter like an ordinary case, without weighing the seriousness of the allegations.

The Supreme Court has also been wary of pre-arrest bail in economic offences generally. Refusing it to P. Chidambaram on 5 September 2019, the court said: “Grant of anticipatory bail, particularly in economic offences would definitely hamper the effective investigation.”

Apply that law to this case. The Saket court examined the material and concluded that “the twin conditions provided under Section 45(1)(ii) of the PMLA are not satisfied” and that the applicant “has not been able to demonstrate that there are reasonable grounds for believing that he is not guilty of the offence of money laundering.”

That is a finding on the statutory test by the court designated to try the case. For the High Court to grant relief, it would have to be satisfied of the opposite: that there are reasonable grounds to believe he is not guilty. Nothing reported from the 1 October hearing suggests new material of that kind. What was reported was an assurance that he is “ready to join investigation” and a description of the family as a “well known builder.” Neither is an answer to Section 45.

Ground two: he was given the chance to cooperate, and did not take it

Anticipatory bail is a discretionary relief, and discretion looks at conduct. Here the conduct is on the record and it is poor.

The Saket court found that summonses were served on him on seven occasions. He appeared before the ED’s Gurugram Zonal Office on two. He “failed to appear in person and co-operate in the investigation on five occasions on one pretext or the other.”

Those absences did not happen in a vacuum. On 30 July 2026 the Delhi High Court recorded his undertaking in these words: “The petitioner’s undertaking is taken on record that the petitioner will fully cooperate with the Enforcement Directorate.” Special Public Prosecutor Anand Kirti relied on that undertaking before the Saket court.

Then, on 3 August 2026, when the ED asked for open-ended non-bailable warrants against him and his father, Additional Sessions Judge Sheetal Chaudhary Pradhan granted interim protection instead, on the express basis that both had “expressed their readiness and willingness to join and cooperate.” She directed them to join the investigation whenever called.

So by mid-September he had made a promise to the High Court and received a direction from a Sessions court, both saying the same thing. The special judge then counted five absences in seven summonses and concluded that this conduct “disentitles him to the concession of anticipatory bail.”

The entire logic of pre-arrest bail is a bargain: the accused keeps his liberty, and in return the investigator gets his presence and his answers. An applicant who has already been offered that bargain twice, and is found to have defaulted, is poorly placed to ask for it a third time. His counsel told the High Court on 1 October that he “is ready to join investigation.” That is exactly what was said in July and in August.

Ground three: the investigation is at the stage where it needs him most

The ED’s theory of this case is about where money went. The FIRs, registered in Delhi and Gurugram, allege that RDL collected money from customers for homes and commercial units in Raheja Revanta, Shilas, Trinity, Oma, Raheja Mall, Aranya, Atharva and Vedanta, and that instead of completing those projects the company misappropriated the funds.

The agency’s specific allegation against Nayan Raheja is that he was “looking after the affairs” of RDL, “or at least” was a director of RDL subsidiaries “in which the funds received from the home buyers were diverted for non-construction purposes.”

If that allegation is right, he is not a peripheral witness. He sits at the point in the structure where, on the ED’s case, the money left the projects. Tracing funds through layered group companies depends on people as much as paper: who authorised a transfer, on whose instruction, to what end. Those are questions for a person, asked in sequence, with documents put to him and follow-ups pressed.

An investigator cannot do that with someone who attends two sittings in seven. And an order guaranteeing in advance that he cannot be arrested removes the one consequence that has any prospect of changing that pattern. The court has already seen what his cooperation looks like when it is voluntary.

The timing matters too. The ED searched premises linked to the company and its promoters in June 2025 and again on 25 April 2026, and issued three provisional attachment orders between April and August 2026. The investigation is plainly in its most active phase. This is the worst moment to dilute the agency’s ability to question a person it considers central.

Ground four: the scale of the alleged harm

Courts weighing bail are entitled to look at the gravity of what is alleged and the number of people affected. On both counts this case is at the heavy end.

These are not victims of a paper loss. They are families who, on the allegations, paid almost the full price of a home over a decade ago and are still servicing loans while paying rent elsewhere.

Nor is this the company’s first encounter with regulators. Haryana RERA banned sales in Revanta in April 2023, froze the project’s accounts and ordered a forensic audit. The NCLT ordered insolvency over the Shilas project in November 2024 and over Revanta in June 2026. Earlier still, published reports record an income-tax raid in 2010, a 2014 Cobrapost sting after which the CBDT ordered a probe into Raheja and 34 other developers, and a 2014 reference from the Prime Minister’s Office to Haryana over the Atharva project. None of that proves the present charge, and none of it is alleged against Nayan Raheja personally. But it answers any suggestion that this prosecution came out of nowhere against a company with an untroubled record.

Where the alleged loss runs to thousands of crores and thousands of households, the public interest in an unobstructed investigation is at its highest.

Ground five: the defence does not hold together

The defence rests on three propositions. Each has a problem.

“He was not charge-sheeted in the predicate offences.” The Saket court dealt with this directly. That a person is not named in the FIRs, or is named but not charge-sheeted, “does not ipso facto mean that he also stands absolved from the proceedings under PMLA.” Money laundering under Section 3 of the Act is a distinct offence about dealing with proceeds of crime. The applicant must at least prima facie show he did not deal with them. The court found he had not.

“He had no role in management.” The defence says he was a director only from 15 January 2003 to 12 January 2008 and from 16 August 2010 to 26 November 2010, holds 0.81 per cent of the shares and draws a salary for advising on architectural drawings. But the ED’s allegation is not confined to the parent company’s board. It is that he was a director of subsidiaries that received diverted funds. A resignation from the RDL board in 2010 does not answer that.

The description keeps changing. In the bail proceedings he is a former director with no management role. Yet the PTI report of the 3 August order described him as RDL’s Managing Director, and in the High Court his counsel reportedly spoke of the Rahejas as a well-known builder with about 15 completed projects. It may be that the wire report was loose and counsel was speaking of the group. Even so, a court asked to accept that he is a mere design adviser is entitled to notice that the family’s building record is being offered as a reason to trust him.

There is a simple way to resolve all three points: full, sustained questioning with the corporate records on the table. That is precisely what the applicant has avoided, and precisely what anticipatory bail would make harder.

Ground six: what a grant would signal

Courts decide cases, not messages. But orders are read, and this one will be read closely by two audiences.

The first is every person who gives a court an undertaking. An undertaking is a promise made to a judge in exchange for something, usually time or protection. If a recorded undertaking to “fully cooperate” can be followed by five missed summonses and then by the very relief the undertaking was meant to earn, the device loses its value for every court that relies on it.

The second audience is the real-estate sector. Delayed and abandoned housing projects are among the most common ways ordinary Indian families lose their savings. The ED has opened similar investigations against other developers accused of diverting buyers’ money. If the practical lesson of this case is that a person the agency considers central can decline most summonses and still secure protection from arrest, every promoter’s lawyer will draw the obvious conclusion, and every investigating officer will find the next summons a little easier to ignore.

Refusing anticipatory bail does none of the things its critics fear. It does not convict him. It does not even require his arrest; that remains a decision for the agency, subject to the safeguards in Section 19 of the PMLA and to challenge in court. It simply declines to promise, in advance, that the investigator’s strongest lawful tool is off the table for someone who has not used the gentler ones.

The other side: the strongest case for granting bail

The arguments above are one side of a live dispute. A fair reader should weigh what his lawyers, and many thoughtful critics of the PMLA, would say in reply.

• Liberty is the default. The Supreme Court said on 28 August 2024, in Prem Prakash’s case, that even under the PMLA “bail is a rule and jail is an exception” and that the twin test does not displace that principle. He is presumed innocent.
• He has not been charged with the underlying offences. On the defence’s account, he is not charge-sheeted in any predicate FIR, left the RDL board in 2010 and owns under one per cent. Custody of a minor shareholder for the alleged acts of a company is a serious step.
• The agency’s own delay undercuts its urgency. The case was registered in 2022. The ED sought warrants only in 2026. The defence says both Rahejas appeared four times in 2025 and supplied documents.
• The evidence is documentary and the assets are frozen. With about ₹2,399.65 crore attached and the records seized in two rounds of searches, the risk of tampering or dissipation is lower than usual. Conditions such as passport surrender and fixed dates of appearance could secure his presence.
• Non-appearance is not the same as guilt. The court recorded “one pretext or the other” without, in the reports, setting out the reasons he gave. Some may have been legitimate.
• The ED’s record invites caution. The government told the Lok Sabha in August 2024 that 5,297 PMLA cases since 2014 had produced 40 convictions. Critics argue that arrest under this law has too often been the punishment in itself.
• The company denies the core allegation. RDL says it spent more on Revanta than it collected, that a RERA-supervised forensic audit found no diversion, and that delays stem from missing government infrastructure.

These are substantial points, and the High Court may find them persuasive. The reply is that most of them go to regular bail or to the merits at trial. On the narrow question of anticipatory bail, two facts remain unanswered: a special court’s finding that Section 45 is not satisfied, and a record of five absences after a promise to cooperate.

What should happen instead

Opposing anticipatory bail is only defensible if the state then does its own job quickly. A refusal that is followed by more years of drift would punish no one and help no buyer.

1. Decide the plea promptly. The applicant and the homebuyers are both entitled to a reasoned order without a long run of adjournments.
2. Complete the questioning within a fixed period. If the ED needs him, it should examine him intensively over days, not issue summonses for months.
3. File the prosecution complaint. A case registered in 2022, with two rounds of searches and three attachment orders behind it, should be ready to go before the special court.
4. Try the case on a day-to-day basis. The fairest answer to every argument about liberty is an early verdict.
5. Put the undertaking before the court that recorded it. If the 30 July undertaking was breached, the High Court should be asked to say so and decide the consequence.
6. Start restitution. The PMLA allows attached property to be restored to legitimate claimants. Verified homebuyers should not have to wait for the end of a trial to see any of it.
7. Publish the forensic audit. The company relies on it; the buyers have never seen it.

The argument of this article is not that Nayan Raheja is guilty. No court has said so. It is that a person who a special court has found does not meet the statutory test, and who did not honour the cooperation he promised, has not earned an advance guarantee against arrest in an investigation into ₹2,425.99 crore of other people’s money. The High Court should decline to give him one, and the Enforcement Directorate should then prove, in open court and without delay, that its case deserved the protection.

Where the case stands

This is an opinion article on a matter pending before the Delhi High Court. As of the sources reviewed, the court had not decided the plea, and the outcome of the hearing listed for 6 October 2026 had not been reported. The allegations against Nayan N. Raheja, Navin M. Raheja and Raheja Developers Ltd are under investigation. No court has convicted any of them; the findings quoted are those of a court at the anticipatory bail stage; the ED’s attachments are provisional; and the company denies fraud or diversion of funds.