Kingfisher loan: HC grants bail to EX-IDBI bank officials

:The Bombay high court on Friday granted bail to Yogesh Aggarwal, former CMD of IDBI bank, and BK Batra, former executive of the bank, in the Kingfisher loan default case.

According to the CBI, the two officials sanctioned loans worth over one thousand crores to businessman Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines despite “weak financial record” of the company. The FIR in the case was registered in July 2015, and the officials, along with seven others, were arrested on January 23, a day before the agency filed its charge sheet.

Justice SS Jadhav said the CBI had failed to justify why “further incarceration of the applicants [Batra and Aggarwal] was imperative after filing of charge sheet.” Besides, the further probe that the agency wants to conduct is in “respect of the letter rogatory and deals primarily with fugitive Vijay Mallya”.

Justice Jadhav also noted Aggarwal’s submission that the decision to “sanction the loan for

Kingfisher was a unanimous decision of the Board of Directors of IDBI and he alone could not be held responsible for the same”. “It is also submitted that the entire Board of Directors had failed to foresee the doomsday of Kingfisher Airlines or that Vijay Mallya would cheat banks,” Jadhav

said. The judge further jun ked the CBI’S submission that if released on bail, the accused could tamper with evidence, say ing the “case rests upon docu mentary evidence and there wil be no question of tampering of evidence considering that both the applicants have retired”.