PMC Bank fraud: Court refuses bail to eight bank directors

The sessions court on Saturday rejected bail plea of former chairmen of Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank Waryam Singh and Surjit Singh Arora along with

The sessions court on Saturday rejected bail plea of former chairmen of Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank Waryam Singh and Surjit Singh Arora along with four directors of the bank. The court also refused to grant pre-arrest bail to Gurman Singh Hothi and Daljit Singh, two other directors of the bank.

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Special public prosecutor Ajay Missar confirmed the order and said the court while rejecting the pleas of the accused held that prime facie the case is established by the prosecution against the accused. Missar also said the court considered that the case involved huge amount of public money and that the investigation is still in progress.

The directors whose bail pleas have been rejected along with Singh and Arora are Jagdish Mookhey, Mukti Bavisi, Ranjit Tara Singh and Tripti Bane. The directors had, in their separate pleas, said they had no role to play in the fraud. Singh and Arora too claimed they had nothing to do with the fraud. The prosecution had opposed the bail plea and argued that the directors and former chairmen of the bank were responsible for the fraud.

While the court rejected the anticipatory bail plea of Hothi and Daljit, it extended the interim protection of the duo till June 15 to allow them time to approach the Bombay high court (HC).

According to the prosecution, PMC Bank granted loans to realty group Housing Development Infrastructure Limited (HDIL) without following due process. The principle loan amount of ₹2,400 crore snowballed into ₹6,670 crore because HDIL failed to repay multiple loans between 2008 and 2019. Senior management of PMC Bank covered up these irregularities to avoid scrutiny by the Reserve Bank of India.