Ex-Ranbaxy promoters Malvinder, Shivinder Singh sent to 4-day police custody

A city court on Friday sent two businessmen brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh arrested in an alleged fraud case to 4-day police custody, observing their offence was of "very serious nature", even as the latter moved the Delhi High Court to quash the FIR against him.

The Singh brothers, who are former promoters of Fortis Healthcare and Ranbaxy Laboratories, fought multiple legal battles in three different courts.

While the Delhi High Court reserved the order on whether to issue notice to the police and the Centre on the plea of Malvinder to quash the FIR, a trial court sent him, his younger brother Shivinder and three others to police custody after they were arrested for allegedly misappropriating funds of Religare Finvest Ltd (RFL), causing it losses of Rs 2,397 crore.

The High Court also heard the applications filed by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) head Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family members that they do not owe any money to RHC Holdings Pvt Ltd, promoted by the Singh brothers.

The Economic Offences Wing(EOW) of the Delhi police formally arrested Malvinder Singh early Friday morning after detaining him at Ludhiana, Punjab, on the intervening night of Thursday-Friday. The others were arrested on Thursday.

Apart from Malvinder (46), Shivinder (44), the others named in the FIR are Sunil Godhwani (58), the former chairman and managing director of the REL, Kavi Arora (48) and Anil Saxena, who held key positions in the REL and RFL.

All five of them were on Friday produced before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Deepak Sherawat who allowed their custodial interrogation by the EOW.

"The offence is of very serious nature involving huge amount of siphoning of money," the magisterial court said.

The judge said the police custody is necessary to "trace the trail of the cheated amount and find out the role of other persons who might have participated in the conspiracy and confrontation with the other officials of RFL and REL (Religare Enterprises Limited)".

"I am of the opinion that four days PC (police custody) remand of the accused persons is necessary at this stage. Hence, application of the investigating officer is allowed and accused persons be remanded to police custody for a period of four days and accused be produced on October 15."