CBI Files Suplementary Chargesheet Against In Rs 7,080 Crore Bank Fraud Case

The supplementary chargesheet coincides with the legal proceedings against the fugitive diamantaire in a court of Dominica.

The CBI has filed a chargesheet against the former international head of the Gitanjali Group of Companies, Sunil Verma, and others in connection with an alleged fraud with the Punjab National Bank, involving an amount of over Rs 7,080 crore, in which the promoter of the group, Mehul Choksi, is wanted by the agency, officials said on Wednesday. Two officials of the Punjab National Bank (PNB) -- Sagar Sawant and Sanjay Prasad -- and a director of the Gili and the Nakshtra brands under the group, Dhanesh Seth, have also been named as accused in the supplementary chargesheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), they said. The supplementary chargesheet, filed more than three years after the first chargesheet in the case against Choksi and his companies, coincides with the legal proceedings against the fugitive diamantaire in a court of Dominica, where he was arrested for "illegal entry" on May 24 after his mysterious disappearance from neighbouring Antigua and Barbuda. "This supplementary chargesheet after three years shows that it is only an attempt to cover up anomalies that the defence had pointed out in the first chargesheet. Moreover, the addition of section 201 of the IPC for destruction of evidence is not legally tenable as a document becomes evidence only after its filing in the court and the allegations are of a period much prior to the FIR," Choksi's lawyer Vijay Aggarwal said.