Ghaziabad: A special court has framed charges against a man in a bank fraud case amounting to over Rs 52 lakh.The CBI court on Friday charged Mudit Agencies proprietor Ajay Lohiya with conniving with various private individuals to defraud the Kaushambi branch of Union Bank of India of Rs 52.6 lakh four years ago.Lohiya has been charged under various sections of IPC and Prevention of Corruption Act 1988. The court, while rejecting his discharge petition, found adequate proof in the preliminary findings of the CBI to continue with the charges levelled against him towards embezzling the funds in 2022.Special CBI Judge (ACB) Anand Prakash Singh said that Lohiya — along with co-accused Shivansh Agarwal, Sharad Gupta, Mukesh Mittal, Anil Singhal and Ravi Kumar Garg — entered into a criminal conspiracy to gobble up and misuse the cash credit (CC) limit loan amount of Rs 20 crore — sanctioned to Agrawal, the director of Shri Shantinath Impex — from Union Bank of India (Mid-Corporate Branch, Kaushambi) in 2016.Agarwal submitted a loan application on Sept 6, 2016 as director of Shri Shantinath Impex requesting a cash credit limit of Rs 20 crore against the mortgage of the company’s shares and books of account. The company said in its application that it was offering as collateral the equivalent mortgage of a commercial property measuring 1,163.08 square yards located in Sahibabad’s Prakash Industrial Estate. The value of the property was stated to be approximately Rs 24 crore.Investigation revealed that after the loan was sanctioned, the amount was embezzled by Agarwal in connivance with director of Indra Tubes Pvt Ltd Gupta, director of MM Tubes Pvt Ltd Mittal, director of Simple Tubes Pvt Ltd Singhal, director of JR Distributors Garg and applicant proprietor of Mudit Agencies Lohiya.“In pursuance of this criminal conspiracy, you received Rs 52,65,117 from the account of M/s Shantinath Impex Polytubes into the account of your firm, Mudit Agencies. On the same day, you issued two cheques for Rs 25,07,506 and Rs 27,57,530 and transferred the said amount through RTGS to the account of Shivashish Polytubes, of which Agarwal was the director, without transacting any business. You played an active role in the embezzlement and layering of the said amount. Thus, you, along with your co-accused, committed offences punishable under Section 120-B read with sections 420, 468 and 471 of IPC and Section 13 (2) read with 13 (1) (d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, which are within the knowledge of this court,” the court said.A case in the matter was registered on the basis of complaint lodged by regional head, Union Bank of India, Meerut, Pawan Kumar Gaur on March 8, 2019, against Agarwal, Amit Agarwal and Shri Shantinath Impex through its director, Valuer and Architect, RM & Associates RM Gupta, proprietor of M/s Global Valuers & Associates, Nanak Chand Gupta and other unknown persons for the offences of criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery in order to cheat and using genuine and forged documents.The investigation also revealed that on Sept 30, 2016, an amount of Rs 52,65,117 was transferred from the CC limit account of Shri Shantinath Impex to the account of Mudit Agencies at Punjab National Bank. According to the account opening form of Mudit Agencies, Lohiya is the sole owner and authorised signatory of the bank account. Subsequently, on the same day, two cheques for Rs 25,07,560 and Rs 27,57,530 were issued through RTGS from the Mudit Agencies account in favour of Shivashish Polylubes Pvt Ltd. During the investigation, nothing came on record to show that Shri Shantinath Impex Pvt Ltd carried on any genuine business.
