Mumbai: The MRA Marg police station on Monday registered a case against several politicians, including former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, and functionaries in connection with the multi-crore Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank scam.
Officials said at least 82 individuals in total — including leaders from the Nationalist Congr-ess Party (NCP), Congress, Shiv Sena and a politician of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — have been accused of causing losses to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore to the MSCB between 2007 and 2011.
The Bombay high court had, on Thursday, observed that there was “credible evidence” against the accused and directed the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) to file an FIR in the case within five days.
The police will first rummage through documents related to the case, following which further action will be initiated. “The documents will be studied based on allegations and the statements of the accused will be recorded subsequently,” said a Mumbai police officer.
Those named in the case include the NCP’s Ajit Pawar, Hasan Mushrif, Vijay Singh Mohite-Patil, Rajendra Shingane, Sadashivrao Mandlik and Diliprao Sopal; the Congress’ Madhukar Chavan, Dil-ip Deshmukh and Vijay Waddettiwar; Shiv Sena’s Anandrao Adsul, the Peasants and Work-ers Party’s Jayant Patil and the Bharatiya Jan-ata Party’s Rajan Teli.
Several senior cooperative bank officials from 34 districts in the state have also been named as accused.
The Maharashtra Coo-perative Societies (M-CS), an inquiry commission with quasi-judicial powers had filed a chargesheet stating that the decisions of the accused were responsible for heavy losses. A subsequent audit report by the National Bank for Agriculture and Ru-ral Development (NAB-ARD) revealed that several laws had been flouted by the accused while lending to sugar factories and spinning mills. These loans went bad, putting the bank in deep trouble.
The high court heard the petition filed by local activist Surinder Arora, who had also approached the EOW earlier, seeking criminal proceedings against the accused.
The accused were booked under Sections 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 409 (Criminal breach of trust by a public servant, or by a banker, merchant or agent), 406 (Punishment for criminal breach of trust), 465 (Punishment for forgery), 467 (Forgery of valuable security, will, etc) and 120 (B) (Punishment of criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
