The search, seizure, freezing and retention of property are therefore not isolated civil actions divorced from criminal proceedings; they constitute successive statutory steps flowing from the very registration of the predicate offence. To sever one link from the other would be to dismantle the legislative scheme itself,” the court observed. Ltd. challenging ECIRs, on the criminal jurisdiction of the High Court. It cannot, therefore, be artificially divorced from the criminal proceedings that give it life,” the court said. The court further said that “the predicate offence is the skeleton; the ECIR is the flesh and blood that envelopes it.