Court extends ED custody of Malvinder Singh, Sunil Godhwani till Nov 23

A Delhi court Monday extended by a week the custodial interrogation of former Fortis Healthcare promoter Malvinder Singh and former CMD of Religare Enterprises Ltd (REL) Sunil Godhwani by the ED in a money laundering case related to alleged misappropriation of funds of Religare Finvest Ltd (RFL).

Special Judge Sandeep Yadav extended the ED custody of both the accused till November 23 on a plea moved by the probe agency's special public prosecutor Nitesh Rana.

In its application, the Enforcement Directorate sought 11 more days to interrogate Singh and Godhwani.

"After considering rival submissions and having gone through the application, the court is of opinion that further custodial interrogation of accused is required for effective and meaningful investigation.

"Accordingly, accused are remanded to custody of ED till November 23," the judge said.

While seeking the custody, the ED told the court that the accused have to be confronted with the persons who have made material disclosures during investigation.

"Accused are required to be confronted with digital evidence recovered during investigation which are voluminous in nature.

"Summons to other related persons have been issued who have been required to attend proceedings in next days and accused would be needed to confront with those summoned persons. Accused have given evasive replies to various queries put to him," Rana told the court.

The plea was opposed by the accused persons who said that the ED had already got enough time to interrogate them.

The ED had arrested Singh and Godhwani in the money laundering case on November 14.

The agency took both the accused in its custody inside the Tihar central jail here, where they were lodged in a case filed by the Delhi Police in relation to the alleged scam. Both Singh and Godhwani are accused of laundering money, punishable under sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, the ED said.

They were in judicial custody along with Malvinder Singh's brother Shivinder and two others -- Kavi Arora and Anil Saxena -- in a case filed by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Delhi Police.

RFL is a group firm of Religare Enterprises Ltd, which was earlier promoted by the Singh brothers.

Both the accused, along with others, transferred an amount of about Rs 1,000 crore to various persons from entities linked to the corporate loan book and finally, the money was siphoned off, according to the ED.

The agency started its investigation in the matter on the basis of a case lodged by the Delhi Police.

Malvinder (46), Shivinder (44), Godhwani (58), Arora (48) and Saxena were arrested by the Delhi Police's EOW for allegedly diverting the money and investing in other companies.

The EOW registered an FIR in March after it received a complaint from RFL's Manpreet Suri against Shivinder, Godhwani and others, alleging that loans were taken by them while managing the firm but the money was invested in other companies.

"They put RFL in a poor financial condition by disbursing loans to companies with no financial standing and controlled by them. The companies to which the loans were disbursed willfully defaulted in repayments and caused a loss to RFL to the tune of Rs 2,397 crore," the police had alleged.