
A Delhi court Tuesday sent Ratul Puri, nephew of Madhya Pradesh CM Kamal Nath, to judicial custody till September 17 in a money laundering case related to a bank loan fraud worth Rs 354 crore. The ED had arrested Puri on August 20.
The court had on Friday extended Puri’s custodial remand by four days. Seeking extension of Puri’s custody, the ED had told the court that “during probe, voluminous record of documents has been collected and due to paucity of time, the could not be confronted with them”.
Puri is already booked in another money laundering case related with the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper scam in which the Delhi High Court had earlier dismissed his anticipatory bail plea, saying his custodial interrogation was “required for an effective investigation”.
He was arrested under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the bank fraud case after he appeared before the central probe agency in the chopper scam after it had slapped a fresh criminal case against him and others, taking cognisance of a CBI FIR.
The latest PMLA case emerged from a CBI FIR of August 17, where Ratul Puri, his father Deepak Puri, mother Nita (Nath’s sister) and others were booked in connection with a Rs 354 crore bank fraud case filed by the Central Bank of India. The CBI had carried out multiple searches in pursuance of this FIR.
The Puri family, other individuals like Sanjay Jain and Vineet Sharma were booked by the CBI for alleged criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery and corruption.
Ratul Puri was booked in this case in his capacity as executive director of Moser Baer India Limited (MBIL), a firm promoted by his father Deepak Puri. The company is manufactured optical storage media like compact discs, DVDs, solid state storage devices.
Ratul Puri had resigned from the post of executive director in 2012, while his parents continue to be on the board, the bank had said in a statement and compliant to the CBI.
Moser Baer was taking loans from various banks since 2009 and went for debt restructuring a number of times, the bank had alleged in the complaint which is now part of the CBI FIR.
(With PTI inputs)