48-year-old Chandigarh man held for duping NRI of ₹3.5 crore

The complainant, Parvinder Kaur Bhatia, a resident of Essex, UK, had approached Competent Finman Pvt Ltd, Chandigarh, in 2002 to transfer her deceased husband’s shares to her name

Police have arrested a 48-year-old man for unauthorised share transactions, causing financial loss worth ₹3.5 crore to a UK-based NRI.

Police arrested the accused on Wednesday and presented him before a court that remanded him to police custody for one day. (iStock)

The complainant, Parvinder Kaur Bhatia, a resident of Essex, UK, had approached Competent Finman Pvt Ltd in 2002 to transfer her deceased husband’s shares to her name.

The firm’s employee, Parveen Kumar Bhardwaj, took her signatures on various documents and misused a special power of attorney to instead transfer the shares to his mother and other associates for personal gain. These unauthorised transactions caused her financial loss worth ₹3.5 crore and led to notices from income tax authorities, alleged Bhatia.

On her complaint, police arrested Bhardwaj on Wednesday and presented him before a court that remanded him to police custody for one day.

Former bank employee held for siphoning off ₹62 lakh

In another case, police have arrested a former employee of ICICI Bank’s Manimajra branch for misappropriating cash deposits amounting to ₹62 lakh in 2017.

The accused, Arun Saluja, alias Neeraj, 41, is a resident of Sector 21-C.

His arrest came on the complaint of Ajay Kahlon, deputy manager of M/S Brink India Pvt Ltd, a cash management company.

Kahlon submitted that the company had deposited cash collected from various customers at ICICI Bank’s Manimajra branch on July 3 and 4, 2017. However, the bank reported it never received it. Probe revealed that Saluja received the cash under false receipts and siphoned it off.

He was arrested on Monday and produced before a court that sent him to two-day police custody. According to police, he is already implicated in two other cases: one from 2018 under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and another from 2017 under Sections 406, 420, 120-B of the IPC, both registered at the Manimajra police station.