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Madhavpura Bank chief remanded till April 9

Ramesh L Parikh, Madhavpura Mercantile Cooperative Bank chairman, was remanded to CBI custody till April 9 by a special judge in Bombay on Friday.

Parikh, who surrendered, was arrested last night for his alleged involvement in the Rs 1.37 billion Bank of India pay order scam.

Parikh was third to be remanded to CBI custody after Ketan Parekh and the bank's Mandvi branch manager Jagdish Pandya.

Ketan Parekh, his relative Kartik Parekh (director of Panther Investrade Ltd) and Jagdish Pandya (manager of Madhavpura Cooperative Bank's Mandvi branch) have already been remanded to CBI custody till April 9.

On a plea by defence counsel Avinash Rasal, the judge allowed the accused medicines and home-cooked food, subject to security check by CBI. He said the accused was a diabetic and had undergone bypass surgery recently.

The judge also directed CBI to get the accused medically examined in a hospital if he complained of any health problem.

The defence lawyer submitted that the accused had himself surrendered before CBI and denied that Ramesh had evaded arrest. He had gone to Bhavnagar to visit his ailing sister and was not aware about CBI probe into the alleged scam, he said.

CBI prosecutors Gul Asnani and Bharat Singh Raghuvanshi contended that Ramesh was not at all co-operative and was evading interrogation. They sought his custody till April 12 but defence lawyer said he would not object if the accused was remanded till April 9.

CBI said in the remand application that Ramesh had been confronted with co-accused Jagdish Pandya and both of them were trying to pass the blame on each other for issuing pay orders to Bank of India, although there was insufficient money in the account of Ketan Parekh with Madhavpura bank.

Ramesh blamed the managing director of the bank, Devendra Pandya, for issuing such instructions to favour accused Ketan.

Devendra Pandya is at large and CBI is looking out for him, the remand application said.

According to CBI, six pay orders were issued by Madhavpura bank on March 8 and seven more on the next day.

They were presented to Bank of India which credited the total amount of Rs 1.37 billion in the accounts of Classic Credit Ltd. (Rs 650 million), Panther Fin Cap and Management Services Ltd (Rs 520 million) and Panther Investrade (Rs 200 million).

When the pay order was sent in the clearing, Madhavpura Co-operative bank failed to meet its liability and also did not participate in the clearing operations. By then, the funds had been credited to accounts of Parekh's firms. Thus money was siphoned off and Bank of India cheated, CBI alleged.

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