Goodwin Jewellers case: Supreme Court tells investors to move HC

In a rare 10-minute-long hearing of the public interest litigation (PIL) filed by the Goodwin Investors’ Association, the Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday, gave the

In a rare 10-minute-long hearing of the public interest litigation (PIL) filed by the Goodwin Investors’ Association, the Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday, gave the liberty to the petitioners to approach the Bombay High Court (HC).

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The court cited the case as important but not as voluminous as the 2013 Saradha chit fund case, as the exact amount of loss occurred is yet to be determined. The association has decided to approach HC in a week’s time.

The case was heard by the bench of Justice Arun Mishra and Indira Banerjee.

“I explained the judges about the case and they showed sympathy to the investors. The judges said that the petitioners can now approach the Bombay high court and the apex court disposed the case,” said Pavan Pathak, advocate of Goodwin Investors’ Association.

“The judges explained that the Saradha chit fund case involved a loss of ₹5,000 crore. However, in Goodwin case the volume of loss is not known yet. Hence, they cannot order a CBI probe. They instead wanted us to approach the HC. We will now approach the HC in a week. We will still demand a CBI probe to recover the money of the investors,” added Pathak, who claimed that the judges heard the case for only 10 minutes, which was rare.

“Since SC has asked us to approach HC we will do that now. The fight will be on until the investors get their money back,” said Murali Pillai, 50, a Pune-based investor whose family invested around ₹14 lakhs with the Goodwin Jewellers.

The Goodwin brothers Sunilkumar Akkarakaran and Sudheerkumar Akkarakaran were arrested by the Thane economic offences wing (EOW) on December 14 .

Presently they are in police custody till December 24.