Amrapali directors will spend nights in hotel under police watch
NEWDELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday put three directors of the Amrapali group, who were detained for failing to hand over financial documents for a forensic audit, under police surveillance till the papers are catalogued but allowed them to stay in a hotel.
The court also issued a formal contempt notice against the directors, which it will take up as a separate case on November 20.
A bench of justices UU Lalit and DY Chandrachud said they did not want the trio to remain at home while cataloguing was on and gave a deadline of 15 days to complete the process.
Thereafter, the two auditors chosen by the top court will complete their task within 10 weeks.
Agreeing with their counsel’s request, the court allowed the directors to stay in Hotel Park Ascent in Noida Sector 62 but pointed out that “during the entirely to this exercise, the three directors shall always remain under police surveillance”.
The court order came after the company violated two judicial orders, directing them to produce account books for a forensic audit.
Homebuyers seeking possession of around 42,000 flats had dragged the embattled real estate company to the top court.
On October 9, a bench of justices Arun Misra and Lalit handed over the custody of the three directors — Anil Kumar Sharma, Shiv Priya and Ajay Kumar —to the Tilak Marg police for playing hide and seek” with the court and not complying with its orders to submitting account books of 46 companies of the group to the forensic auditor.
They were ordered to remain in custody till the papers were seized by the police.
The court had on Wednesday clarified the three need not remain in lock-up after the directors said the voluminous documents were stacked in nine prop- erties of the Amrapali Group, two of them in Bihar.
The police were directed to seal the properties when the directors said it was not possible to physically hand them over.
The company’s counsel told the bench on Thursday that the sealing process was completed and the police had released the directors. But the judges ordered the directors to appear before the SHO, Sector 57, Noida, to be taken to the place where the cataloguing work had to start. The entire exercise would be done at one premises at a time, the court said.
Noida’s superintendent of police was directed to take the three directors to the hotel for overnight stay after the cataloguing work is over during the day.
“They shall not be allowed access to any mobile phone without the authorisation of the police,” the court said, adding “They will always be under the watchful eyes of the police.”
In view of the cataloguing exercise, the court exempted the directors from personal appearance before the Debt Recovery Tribunal on October 15.