Extract from Times of India dated 23.04.2009 (Page No.5)
Dummy petitioner lands 2 in jail
New Delhi: The special operations squad (SOS) of crime branch, Delhi Police, has arrested the owner of a private property firm and his advocate for misleading the Delhi High Court last year. They had fielded a dummy petitioner in HC against themselves, but were exposed. Following this, HC had ordered a case to be registered and roped in the crime branch.
According to crime branch officials, it took almost five months to investigate the role of the accused, R.K. Nanda, and his advocate, Sharad Aggarwal. “Our investigations have revealed that Nanda has been involved in numerous cheating cases and has been arrested for the same. The sheer number of complaints against him has made our case stronger, but time consuming. We arrested the duo on Tuesday morning after a non-bailable warrant from the court and produced them at the Patiala House Court the same day. The court rejected their bail,” said a senior crime branch official.
Earlier, the Delhi High Court had brought in the crime branch to investigate if the firm, Durga Builders Pvt. Ltd., fielded a fake petitioner in court in November 2008. Its directors allegedly did this in a bid to convince the HC that the company ought to be wound up as it was bankrupt, and so unable to honour payments taken from applicants.
The high court was alerted about what was going on by advocates Vijay Aggarwal and Rakesh Makhija, who were fighting the case for the duped customers.
Sensing there was more to the matter than meets the eye, HC also asked the crime branch to trace the original petitioner, one Manjit Kaur, on whose behalf the petition was filed in court against the builder group.
“Material facts and documents have been deliberately concealed by the management. Valuable time of the court has been wasted while compliance of judgements of several courts has been unfairly delayed.” Justice Mittal observed in her order, while slapping a fine of Rs.50,000/- on R.K. Nanda and Promila Nanda, directors of Durga Builders earlier.
Manjit Kaur had initially approached HC through a lawyer claiming Durga Duilders owed her an outstanding amount of nearly Rs.10 lakh for enjoying security services provided by her company. When despite several notices, the company failed to pay, Kaur claimed she was seeking winding up of this firm.
“Our investigations have revealed that neither the woman nor the woman existed in the address provided to us. In fact, the names were picked up randomly from the previous clients who had sought the advocate help,” said a crime branch officer.
On its part both directors readily admitted they suffered a financial crunch and even showed how Rs.25,000/- had already been paid to Kaur. Subsequently when no payment could be made, HC appointed an official liquidator to oversee winding up process.
It was at this stage that several creditors moved HC, informing it that the firm had been paid money towards booking of plots owned by it and that it was now trying to seek winding up to escape liability of returning this money. They also drew HC’s attention to an earlier order by another HC judge to crime branch to trace one Vishesh Jain, who filed a similar winding up petition against this company.
