# P&H High Court Grants Bail In Prolonged ED Trial 2026-08-18T14:40:37+00:00 | Governance | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 1 independent outlet The Punjab and Haryana High Court has granted regular bail in a money laundering case linked to the alleged diversion of homebuyers’ funds. Justice Sumeet Goel held that prolonged pre-trial custody can justify bail under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act when there is no realistic prospect of the trial ending within a reasonable time. The court said the stringent twin conditions under Section 45 PMLA must yield to the constitutional right to liberty under Article 21 in such circumstances. It held that the one-half or one-third custody thresholds under Section 436-A of the CrPC and Section 479 of the BNSS are minimum statutory requirements, not preconditions for constitutional bail. The assessment must consider factors including the prescribed sentence, the accused’s prima facie role, prosecution conduct and the pace of the trial. ## Indian Opinion Analysis LiveLaw’s account gives prominence to the court’s constitutional criticism of prolonged custody and its historical references to Ulpian, Magna Carta and Blackstone. It presents the ruling mainly as a safeguard against indefinite incarceration, while providing limited detail about the underlying allegations and the accused. The judgment itself does not create a fixed time limit for bail. Instead, it requires a case-specific assessment of delay, prosecution conduct, alleged culpability and the likely trial timeline. The practical issue to watch is how courts apply this multi-factor test in future PMLA cases involving long custody and slow trials. ## Coverage Coverage: 1 source, 1 government-critical - livelaw.in (government critical) Foregrounds prosecution delay, prolonged custody and constitutional limits on PMLA This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above. Tags: Article 21, Enforcement Directorate, PMLA, Punjab and Haryana High Court Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/ph-high-court-grants-bail-in-prolonged-ed-trial/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/ph-high-court-grants-bail-in-prolonged-ed-trial/#story-in-brief Review state: restored archive article, accurate at time of publication, not offered to search indexes. How this brief was made: an AI model read the report linked above and wrote this summary and analysis, which were published automatically. Published briefs are sampled every hour by an automated quality check; the editor verifies its findings and approves corrections, and corrected briefs carry a dated correction line. We do no original reporting. Methodology: https://indianopinion.org/ai-use-policy/