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CBI to investigate Uttar Pradesh ‘Bike bot’ ponzi scheme
The federal agency has named Sanjay Bhati (42), owner of Garvit Innovative Promoters Ltd (GIPL) who holds diploma in mechanical engineering and launched the fictitious company in 2010 and floated Bike Bot scheme in 2017 under which ₹1,500 crore was duped from investors
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has taken over probe into alleged Bike Bot ponzi scheme, in which nearly 2.25 lakh investors were duped of crores, people familiar with the development said on Monday.
The central agency mentioned the figure in its First Information Report (FIR), registered on October 21, as ₹15,000 crore but it was not clear how it arrived at the figure or it was a typing error.
Initially, when the scandal came to light in 2019, it was alleged that investors were cheated of close to ₹1,500 crore.
The federal agency has named Sanjay Bhati (42), owner of Garvit Innovative Promoters Ltd (GIPL) who holds diploma in mechanical engineering and launched the fictitious company in 2010 and floated Bike Bot scheme in 2017 under which ₹1,500 crore was duped from investors. Each investor was duped of ₹62,100 in the name of providing bike taxis. He was arrested following his surrender in Uttar Pradesh’s Surajpur court in June 2019 and is in prison since then.
The scam surfaced after a complainant Sunil Kumar Meena, a resident of Jaipur, filed an FIR against the Bike Bot operator at Dadri police station in Uttar Pradesh on February 14, 2019 against Sanjay Bhati and five directors of the company.
In its FIR, CBI has taken cognisance of the Uttar Pradesh government letter, which had referred 11 FIRs of the Noida Police registered at Dadri for the central agency probe in December 2019.
“Under a preplanned conspiracy the respondent Sanjay Bhati and his associates have cheated and defrauded investors and have collected at least 15 thousands crores of money across the country in the name of business of ‘BIKE BOT - THE BIKE TAXI POWERED BY GIPL’ and misappropriated the same,” the FIR stated.
CBI FIR, without naming the officers, said that “complaints were submitted and fraudulent activity of the company was in the knowledge of the Noida district authority’s as well as police authorities who did not take any action, rather Senior Superintendent of Police and Superintendent of Police Crime branch pressurized the complainants to withdraw their complaints”.
Bhati is lodged in prison. HT could not locate his legal representatives.
