Gokulnath, Chitalia remanded to judicial custody

MUMBAI: Gokulnath Shetty, and Vipul Chitalia have been remanded to judicial custody uptil March 28 by the special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the Punjab National Bank scam.

Shetty, a former deputy general manager of Punjab National Bank (PNB) who is involved in issuance of Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) worth Rs 13,910 crore to Nirav Modi and

Mehul Choksi is also involved yet another case of fraud from the infamous Brady House branch in

Mumbai. Just a month before retirement, Shetty entered into a criminal conspiracy with directors of Chandri Papers and Allied Products Pvt Ltd and issued two fraudulent LoUs for Rs 9.23 crore to SBI's Antwerp branch in April 2017. CBI has also booked Manoj Hanumat Kharat, single window operator at Brady House, and Aditya Rasiwasia and Ishwardas Agarwal, Directors of Chandri Papers. It stated that neither was there any available credit limit to the company nor did the bank retain 110% margin while issuing the LoUs. Chitalia, the Vice-President of Gitanjali Group of companies was arrested for the Rs. 12,636 crore fraud perpetrated by billionaire Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi, the promoter of Gitanjali gems. They did not enter the instructions of the LoU in the internal software to avoid scrutiny.

Manoj Kharat (single window operator of PNB) Hemant Bhat (authorised signatory of Modi's company), Bechhu Tiwari (then chief manager in the Forex department of PNB), Yashwant Joshi (scale II manager in Forex department), Praful Sawant (scale-I officer handling exports section), Manish Bosamiya (former AGM- operations-of Firestar International Ltd owned by Modi), Miten Pandia (then Financial manager of Firestar), Sanjay Rambhia (auditor of Firestar), Aniyath Shiv Raman Nair (then director of Gili India Ltd, a Gitanjali Group firm owned by Choksi), were produced in the court of Special CBI judge S R Tamboli on Saturday. The court sent all of them to judicial custody.

- STAFF REPORTER