7 borrowers arrested in NSEL scam

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai police on Monday arrested seven borrowers in Rs 5,574-crore National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) payment scam. The total dues of the seven stand at Rs 1,163 crore. Monday’s arrests were most in a single day in the NSEL case.

Those detained were Kailash Baburam Agrawal of ARK Imports (total outstanding of Rs 719.37 crore), Narayan Nageshwar Roy of NCS Sugars (Rs 53.70 crore), Ghanta Kameshwar Rao of Spin Cot Textiles (Rs 38.26 crore), BVH Prasad of Juggernaut, under Aastha Group (Rs 242.65 crore), Prashant Ramesh Boruga of Metkor Alloys & Industries (Rs 95.08 crore) and Chandramohan Premchand Singhal and Varun Gururaj Gupta of Vimladevi Agrotech (Rs 13.94 crore).

“After sustaining interrogation early this morning, the investigating officers felt it was necessary to have custodial interrogation, as they weren’t cooperating,” said Rajvardhan Sinha, assistant commissioner of police, EOW.

It is expected the EOW will present the seven borrowers before a Maharashtra Protection of Investor Deposits court.

In the past, the EOW had made 11 arrests in the NSEL case; the last was that of Financial Technologies chief Jignesh Shah and Shreekant Javalgekar, managing director and chief executive of Multi Commodity Exchange. While Shah has applied for bail from the high court here, after an application in this regard was rejected by a sessions court, Javalgekar’s bail plea was accepted by the sessions court. Earlier, Anjani Sinha, former managing director and chief executive of NSEL, as well as two other NSEL employees —Jay Bhaukhandi and Amit Mukherjee — were also arrested by the EOW. The borrowers arrested earlier were Nilesh Patel of NK Proteins, Lotus Refineries director Arun Kumar Sharma, Gagan Suri of Yathuri Associates and PD Agro managing director Surender Gupta. All of them are out on bail.

A week ago, in its charge sheet against Shah, the city police had indicated investigation against NSEL borrowers, as well as a few brokers, was underway.