New Delhi, Oct. 13 -- The Delhi high court on Monday refused to restrain the Gandhi family controlled Associated Journals Limited (AJL) from seeking release of properties, including Herald House in New Delhi's ITO area, attached by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), before the PMLA Appellate Tribunal in the National Herald case. This was after ED's lawyer additional solicitor-general SV Raju urged the bench of justice Sachin Datta to pass an order for status quo before the tribunal. Raju contended that the trial court's December 16 order refusing to take cognisance of the agency's charge sheet was being used to seek release of properties attached by ED. "I am not passing any order," justice Datta said, while fixing the next hearing on November 2. The court was hearing ED's petition against the December 16 order, which noted that a prosecution complaint filed by an authorised officer under the PMLA, cannot rest on a scheduled offence arising from a private complaint and must be based on an offence registered by a law enforcement agency-either through a police FIR or a complaint by a person authorised to probe the scheduled offence. The 117-page order stated that ED's case reflected a unilateral overreach of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and "an ill-advised out-pacing of the scheme of the PMLA itself". ED argued that the special judge failed to appreciate that cognisance by a competent court on a private complaint stood on a much higher footing. The order, ED asserted, has given a "hall pass" to a category of money launderers. In their September 18 reply, Senior Congress leaders Sonia and Rahul Gandhi contended that the case was the only instance in the country where ED proceeded on the basis of a private complaint. They asserted that the terms "private complaint" or "complaint by a public person/citizen" do not find mention in PMLA, and added that ED was trying to find support from general and convenient self-invented legal premises. It added that the agency was showing "extraordinary interest" in the case, since it filed the appeal a day after the December 16 order....