Pune: A special court here on Wednesday granted bail to Ravindra Prabhakar Marathe, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Bank of Maharashtra (BoM), in the case of alleged flouting of norms for loan disbursement to realty firm DSK Group, which is facing charges of duping its thousands of investors through various schemes.
Judge RN Sardesai granted bail to Marathe on the surety of Rs 50,000.
Police in their case alleged that the accused BoM officials did not follow the rules while giving loans to the Dream City project of DSK Developers Ltd (DSKDL) in Fursungi in Pune. They were accused of fraud worth over Rs 2,000 crore.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray had on Tuesday attacked the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena for arresting BoM directors and officials, including Marathe while not taking any action against top officials of other scam-tainted banks.
Similarly, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar had also said on Tuesday that he would take the lead and discuss the BoM issue with state Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and other concerned persons in regards to the arrest of board members of BoM.
The investigations had begun following a complaint by a depositor Jitendra Narayan Mulekar (65) of Kothrud at the Shivajinagar police station in October last year.
Police have so far booked 19 persons in this case, of whom 13 including developer Deepak Sakharam Kulkarni also known as DSK, his wife Hemanti and son Shirish, are behind bars.
Marathe was among the six persons arrested on June 20 in connection with the Rs 2,043 crore fraud case lodged against Pune-based DSK Group.
Besides Marathe, the economic offences wing (EOW) of Pune police had arrested Sushil Muhnot, former CEO and MD of BoM, bank's executive director Rajendra Kumar Gupta from Pune, zonal manager Nityanand Sadashiv Deshpande, two officials of the DSK Developers Limited (DSKDL), chartered accountant Sunil Madhukar Ghatpande and chief engineer and vice-president Rajiv Dullabh Das-Nevaskar.
They all have been booked under sections 406, 420, 409, 120(b) and 34 of Indian Penal Code as well as sections of the Maharashtra Protection of Interests of Depositors (MPID) Act and sections of the Prize Chit and Money Circulation Banning Act. All were remanded to police custody till June 27.
On May 17 this year, police had filed a 36,875-page-long chargesheet against builder DS Kulkarni and his wife Hemanti.
According to police, since 2010, the Group had allegedly 'lured' people into investing money in the schemes of their company by offering attractive returns. Later, these deposits were allegedly diverted into the accounts of family members of DSK.
