Court Denies CBI's Plea To Arrest Former Gitanjali Group Executive In PNB Scam

A special court here on Friday rejected the Central Bureau of Investigation's plea that sought the arrest of Gitanjali Group's former top executive, Sunil Varma, in the case linked to multi-million dollar Punjab National Bank scam.

Varma, a former international business head of Mehul Choksi's Gitanjali Group, appeared before the court last week, almost seven years after the registration of the PNB fraud case.

Following his appearance, the probe agency had sought his custody, which was rejected by special CBI court judge S M Menjoge.

The CBI then moved a plea seeking to arrest the accused.

However, the special court judge rejected the CBI's application on Friday, saying the court cannot review his own order of rejection of custody of the accused.

Granting permission to arrest the accused would be reviewing the earlier order, the court said.

The CBI, in its plea, had said it needs to interrogate Varma to unearth his role with Mehul Choksi in availment of 142 buyers' credit amounting to Rs 3,011 crore disbursed against 165 unauthorised Letters of Undertaking.

However, the accused, through his lawyer, contended that he was made as accused in the supplementary chargesheet in 2021.

When he left India in May 2017, there was no chargesheet against him. Therefore he cannot be said to have evaded criminal proceedings, his lawyer submitted.

Choksi has been living in Antigua since 2018, after escaping from India, weeks before the scam was reported.

The diamantaire and his nephew, Nirav Modi, allegedly siphoned off over Rs 13,000 crore of public money from the PNB using LoUs and foreign letters of credit by bribing officials of the bank's Brady House branch in Mumbai.