ED seeks cancellation of bizman's bail in bank fraud case

The Enforcement Directorate today approached a Delhi court seeking cancellation of the bail of an accused in the over Rs 5,000-crore bank loan fraud case, alleging that he refused to appear before it despite repeated summons.

In the application filed before the Additional Sessions Judge, the ED's special public prosecutors N K Matta and Nitesh Rana urged the court to cancel the relief granted to Delhi-based businessman Gagan Dhawan, who was earlier arrested by the ED and is currently out on bail.

The agency claimed that he refused to appear before it for confrontation with Ranjit Malik, who had allegedly sent Rs 25 lakh cash to the official residence of a senior Congress leader here.

The court, which today extended by three days the ED custody of Ranjit Malik alias Johny, issued notice to Dhawan and directed him to respond to it by tomorrow.

Rana told the court that Dhawan was required to be confronted with Malik, who was arrested for allegedly sending Rs 25 lakh through one Rakesh Chandra to '23, Mother Teresa Crescent' which is the official address of Congress leader Ahmed Patel.

However, the period of delivery of cash was not disclosed by the agency.

Asked about it, Patel had earlier said, "I don't know anything about this. Let the law take its own course".

Malik was produced before the court on expiry of his 10-day ED custody and the agency moved an application through advocate A R Aditya seeking further custodial interrogation by four days.

Dhawan was arrested on November 1 last year and the ED had alleged that he had facilitated the directors of Gujarat-based pharma firm Sterling Biotech Ltd (SBL) in the purchase of several properties and helped in misuse and diversion of the credit facilities of several bank totalling Rs 5,000 crore.

He was granted bail by a court here on January 4 this year and the judge had put various conditions on him, including that he will appear before the agency as and when called for.

Malik was arrested earlier this month by the agency.

The CBI had booked Sterling Biotech, its directors Chetan Jayantilal Sandesara, Dipti Chetan Sandesara, Rajbhushan Omprakash Dixit, Nitin Jayantilal Sandesara and Vilas Joshi, chartered accountant Hemant Hathi, former director Andhra Bank Anup Garg and some unidentified persons in connection with the alleged bank fraud case.

It had alleged that the company had taken loans of over Rs 5,000 crore from a consortium led by Andhra Bank which had turned into non-performing assets.

The FIR had also alleged that the total pending dues of the group companies were Rs 5,383 crore as on December 31, 2016. The ED had taken a cognisance of this FIR to file a money laundering case against them.