Police custody for two Bank of Baroda officials

A Delhi court on Wednesday remanded two Bank of Baroda’s senior officials to two-day police custody in a case of alleged transfer of black money in foreign exchange worth Rs.6,172 crore to Hong Kong through current accounts opened at a Delhi branch of the bank last year.

The CBI sought five days’ remand of the officials, submitting that they were involved in a scam of Rs.6,000 crore. Though the accused were called two to three times prior to their arrest for probe, they did not cooperate. So, their custodial interrogation was required to unearth the entire conspiracy, counsel for the investigation further argued.

Opposing the plea for police custody, counsel for accused S.K. Garg submitted that his client had written to the Regional Office of the bank this past January about the irregularities which he noticed in several accounts.

“Considering the submissions of counsel for both the parties and the fact that detailed interrogation is required to unearth the entire conspiracy, if any, and to find out the truth, both the accused persons, S.K. Garg and Jainis Dubey, are remanded to police custody till 16.10.2015,” said Special Judge P.K. Jain.

The investigating agency had arrested the two accused on Tuesday.

The alleged scam was detected last month during the bank’s internal audit. It revealed that the foreign exchange business had shot up from Rs.45 crore in 2013-14 to Rs.21,529 crore in 2014-15. It was also found that there were 8,667 foreign exchange transactions between August 2014 and August 2015.