In the ongoing eight-year-old probe into the Rs 60,000 crore Pearl Group ponzi scam, a special CBI court has for the first time granted regular bail to a director of the dubious group of companies out of 8 such high-ranking officials arrested during the course of the investigation.
While Chander Bhushan Dhillon, Pearl Group’s director for legal affairs, has walked out after securing regular bail, 5 other arrested directors — Nirmal Singh Bhangoo (MD), Mohan Lal Sehajpal, Sukhdev Singh, Subrata Bhattacharya, and Gurmeet Singh — are in custody.
Among the two others, Prem Seth, who resigned as director after the scam came to light in 2014, is out on interim bail of 4 weeks on medical grounds, and will surrender next week.
Meanwhile, Kanwaljit Toor, a prominent director of the firm, had died in custody in January. His family now plans to move a petition against the CBI alleging negligence, sources said.
Dhillon, who had joined the Group in 1986, was made a director in 2011 and was among 11 alleged conspirators the agency arrested in December last year.
The court, in its detailed order released Tuesday, pointed out the probe agency’s failure to arrest two other accused with charges similar to Dhillon.
Pearl Group had allegedly collected around Rs 60,000 crore from nearly 5.5 crore investors all across the country by illegally operating different investment schemes, without any statutory approval.
The investors were given agriculture land guarantee, promised interest of 12.5 per cent on investment, apart from free accidental insurance and tax-free maturity on their investments.
They were told that value of their land would also multiply. The probe that began in February 2014 has been dragging on since, with numerous duped investors fighting for justice.
While Pearl Group Managing Director Nirmal Singh Bhangoo was arrested in 2016, CBI had arrested 11 more, including Pearl senior employees and businessmen, in 2021. Dhillon, the Group’s Director (Legal), was among them and accused by the CBI of making investors sign ‘fake sale deeds’ for agricultural land in Madhya Pradesh, apart from conspiring with other firm directors to run the ponzi scheme.
As Public Prosecutor VK Ojha opposed the bail, defence counsel Bhanu Sanoriya underlined CBI’s failure to arrest a businessman and a patwari accused of making the alleged fake sale deeds, while Dhillon remained in custody for four months. He also told the court that the CBI had failed to show that Dhillon was a beneficiary of any money earned through cheating.
Original Article from India express
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