Hyderabad police arrest Topline Shoes MD

The Hyderabad police have arrested H M G Murthy, managing director of the Vadodara-based Topline Shoes Ltd for an offence committed in Andhra Pradesh.

The Hyderabad police arrested Murthy on Saturday, under a non-bailable warrant issued by a Hyderabad court for not appearing before court despite the issuance of court summons.

Earlier, the Hyderabad court had issued summons following a complaint filed by the Videocon group.

The police arrested Murthy from his residence located in Diwalipura area in Vadodara. The Hyderabad police have informed J P Road police station about the proceeding.

Topline Shoes hit the headlines following the FIR filed by Registrar of Companies (RoC) office in J P Road Police Station in Vadodara in July, 2004. The RoC had alleged the Topline Shoes MD and five directors including cricket maestro Sunil Gavaskar, H M B Murthy, Duleep Singh, Vinod B Mistry and Arun L Kapani of duping Rs 4.64 crore through a public issue.

An investigating team headed by police inspector K B Jadeja, J P Nagar police station, has been probing into the case. The Topline Shoes directors floated public issue of 46.5 lakh shares of Rs 10 each , raising Rs 4.65 crore. The company had established a shoe plant near Dabhasa village in Vadodara district to manufacture leather and sports shoes.

"The Topline Shoes case, under investigation, is a completely different case from the one filed in Hyderabad and has nothing do with the case pending in the Hyderabad court. The arrest of Murthy will not affect our investigation," said Sudhir Sinha, Commissioner of Police, Vadodara.

The Vadodara police are studying the documents received from two Mumbai branches of Corporation Bank and Canara Bank last month.

Earlier, the banks have shown their inability to produce the documents related to their transaction with Murthy reasoning that the bank records in 1994-95 were not computerised.

In response, the Vadodara police had summoned the banks to produce the required documents by August 25.