NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has designated a special CBI Court to expedite the trial of India’s biggest bank fraud. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has charged Dheeraj Wadhawan, Kapil Wadhawan-promoters of embattled Dewan Housing Finance Ltd (DHFL)-and several others in the alleged loan fraud of Rs 34,614 crore.
The orders of the Delhi High Court designating a special CBI Judge to exclusively deal with the DHFL case were received on August 1. It is pertinent to mention that considering the gravity of the case and the enormous amount of documents filed by the CBI, number of accused and hundreds of witnesses involved, a special CBI Court had written to the High Court. In April this year, a special CBI Court had shared the information of the case with the High Court with a request to designate “one special court for doing this matter only”.
Special CBI Judge Ashwani Kumar Sarpal, in a judicial order passed on April 27, had highlighted the fact that the documents filed by the CBI run into over 330,000 pages and are kept in 26 trunks.
The order passed on April 27 read “if the main chargesheet and this supplementary chargesheet are taken into consideration, then it shows that there are at present total 108 accused persons/entities who will be represented by different counsels”.
“Further investigation is kept open by CBI especially in respect of money transferred to foreign countries for which formal permission is given above. The number of relied upon documents came in the court consists of about 3,31,000 pages kept in 26 trunks. Approximately 1,00,000 pages unrelied document in further 5-6 trunks may perhaps be deposited by CBI with court. Total 736 witnesses are cited to prove the case”, the order reads.
Underlining the need to expedite the trial of the country’s biggest bank fraud case, the special CBI Judge wrote “Thus, there is a need to expedite the trial which cannot take place in normal court dealing with other matters also. In my view, there is a necessity to deal with case by a special designated court for this case exclusively to take up matter on a day to day basis. Keeping in view the number of witnesses, documents and number of accused persons, the trial still may not be concluded within two-three years, even if the case is taken up on a day to day basis”.
Accordingly, he added, that the “High Court be informed about above information with request to designate one special court for doing this matter only”.
On August 2, the special CBI Judge while transferring other cases from this court noted that the High Court vide order dated August 1 has designated his court “to exclusively deal with case CBI vs Kapil Wadhawan & Others”.
The special CBI Judge further mentioned in his order that “remaining cases are to be transferred to different courts” by the Sessions Judge, Rouse Avenue.
