Mumbai Police today arrested seven more defaulters in connection with the alleged Rs 5,600 crore NSEL scam, a week after filing a 9,000-page supplementary charge sheet against the spot exchange promoter Jignesh Shah.
Kailash Agarwal of Ark Imports, Prashant Borugu of Metcor Alloys, Narayan Rao of NCS Sugars, BVH Prasad of Juggernaut projects Ltd, Varun Gupta and Chandramohan Singhal of Vimladevi Agrotech and Ghantakameshwar Rao of Spincot Textiles were today arrested, an official at Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police said.
The default amount of the seven arrested accused is about Rs 1,200 crore, the official said, adding all the seven accused were called for questioning today and arrested subsequently. "They would be produced before a court tomorrow."
Earlier, along with Shah, his close aide and NSEL board director Shreekant Javalgekar were arrested on May 7 and both had applied for bail in the sessions court. Nine others, including defaulters, were held before Shah's arrest.
On August 4, the EOW had filed 9,000 pages charge sheet against Shah in the special Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors court.
So far, investigators have attached Rs 4,900 crore worth of assets and Rs 356 crore has been deposited in an escrow account. Investigators have interrogated several large brokers in the case and also received interim reports from forensic auditors.
The probe by Economic Offences Wing (EOW) brought out that Shah and Javalgekar had allegedly hatched a criminal conspiracy with other accused, who ran this particular exchange as a non-banking financing company, which led to the default of Rs 5,600 crore payment to over 11,000 investors, the police said. An FIR has been registered in October last year.
EOW had made its first arrest on October 9 last year when it took into custody Amit Mukherjee, an Assistant Vice-President of the exchange. Two days later, it arrested Jay Bahukhundi, another NSEL assistant vice-president.
