Excelsior Correspondent
DODA, Sept 7: Crime Branch today produced challan against seven persons in the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate for duping the innocent people of their hard earned money worth lakhs of rupees.
The accused persons are Jarnail Singh Hanjra, son of H S Hanjra of Mohali, Bal Krishan Bhat, son of Shridhar Bhat of Nehru Market, Ravinder Pandita, son of Tarloki Nath Pandita of Channi Himmat, Javaid Iqbal Magray, son of Abdul Majid Magray of near Police Post Bathindi, Saleem Raza, son of Abdul Qayoom Ganai of Bhaderwah, Sanjay Khajuria, son of Gori Shankar Khajuria of Sarwal Colony and Ram Lal Yogi, son of Laddu Lal Yogi of Rajasthan.
The names of Prabhakaran Plathue, son of S N Plathue and Varinder Kumar Kansal, son of Jagdish Chander Kansal, both the residents of Chandigarh have also been mentioned in the challan despite the fact that they have expired.
An official spokesman said that Bal Krishan Bhat, General Manager Agro Forestry Project Investment and Endowment Plantation India Limited along with several other persons collected an amount of Rs 21,74,650 from 24 investors with assurance to give double the amount of the fixed deposits within a period of three and half years.
They issued FDRs and passbooks to the investors. However, on the date of maturity when the investors went to the office of company they found that Bal Krishan Bhat and his employees had absconded after winding up the business of the company.
On the receipt of complaint, a case was registered at Police Station Doda and during the course of investigation, statements of complainant and other depositors were recorded and copies of fixed deposits seized. Later, the investigation of the case was transferred to Crime Branch and then list of Directors Endowment Plantation Ltd and Article of Association of United Fiscal Corporation were obtained from the offices of Securities and Exchange Board of India, (SEBI) New Delhi and Registrar of Companies for Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh. The specimen signatures of accused persons were obtained and tallied/compared through FSL and expert opinion collected.
From the investigation conducted by Crime Branch, it came to fore that the accused persons cheated 93 investors of Doda by taking Rs 10,19,273.
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