Delhi Court reserves order on Ratul Puri bail plea in bank fraud case

A Delhi Court on Tuesday reserved its order on the bail plea filed by businessman Ratul Puri in connection with Rs 354 crore Moser Baer bank fraud case.

Special CBI Judge Arvind Kumar will deliver the order on the bail plea on December 13.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has opposed the bail saying that if Puri is released on bail, then he may try to tamper with the evidence in the case. ED also said that the investigation in the case is at an initial stage.

In October, the economic watchdog had filed a chargesheet against Puri, who is the former executive director of Moser Baer India Limited (MBIL), his father Deepak Puri and mother Nita Puri on a complaint filed by the Central Bank of India.

Based on the complaint, the ED had arrested Puri on August 19. The bank had accused Moser Baer and its director of defrauding the bank of Rs 354 crores.

Besides the Puri family, others who have been booked for criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery and corruption in the matter are Sanjay Jain and Vineet Sharma.

Moser Baer was involved in the manufacture of optical storage media like compact discs, DVDs, solid-state storage devices.

It had been taking loans from various banks since 2009 and went for debt restructuring a number of times, the Central Bank of India claimed in the complaint.

When the company was unable to pay the debt, a forensic audit was done and the account was declared as a "fraud" by the bank in April earlier this year.

"MBIL has committed fraud and cheated the complainant bank thereby making a wrongful gain to themselves and a wrongful loss to the lender bank which is a custodian of public money," the complaint reads.

The bank claimed that the company and its directors "forged and fabricated documents to induce Central Bank of India to release funds".

"MBIL has caused unlawful loss to our bank to the tune of Rs 354.51 crore as on November 29, 2014, and interest thereon by getting unlawful gains," the complaint added.