Charge sheet against 5 accused

A CHARGE SHEET AGAINST SEVEN OTHER ARRESTED ACCUSED IS EXPECTED TO BE FILED WITHIN THE NEXT COUPLE OF MONTHS

MUMBAI: The economic offences wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police submitted a charge sheet to the metropolitan magistrate court on Friday, in the case of the ~6,670-crore fraud at Punjab Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank. The 32,959 pagecharge sheet has statements of 340 witnesses, including 90 depositors and 10 PMC Bank employees.

The charge sheet has identified the key accused as Rakesh Kumar and Sarang Wadhawan, promoters of Housing Development Infrastructure Limited (HDIL); former managing director of PMC Bank, Joy Thomas; Waryam Singh former chairman of PMC Bank; and Surjeet Singh Arora, former director of PMC Bank. All five were arrested in October. A charge sheet against seven other arrested accused is expected to be filed within the next two months.

EOW joint commissioner of police Rajvardhan Sinha said, “We have added sections 477 A (falsification of accounts) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) in the charge sheet.”

Initially, the accused were booked for cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy on a complaint by Jasbir Singh Matta, who was authorised by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).The first information report said that between 2008 and 2019, the five accused caused loss to the tune of ~4, 355 crore by facilitating loans to the HDIL group and other unknown entities and in return, made gains out of it. (HT has a copy of the FIR.) While the investigations were on, the amount had reached ~6,670 crore.

“We have submitted the interim forensic report as proof to corroborate the allegations. The three accused – Thomas, Arora and Singh – made monetary gains collectively running way over ~10 crore,” said an official familiar with the matter.

To camouflage loans extended to HDIL, the accused made 21, 049 fictitious loan accounts so the defaulting loan accounts would be camouflaged when reports were being submitted to RBI.

Among the witnesses are four senior officers of the bank whose statement was recorded under section 164 of Criminal Procedure Code. “These four bank officials have given information of the fraud and their statements have made our case very strong,” said the official.