ICICI Bank Loan Fraud Case : Supreme Court Issues Notice In CBI’s Plea Challenging Bail Granted To Videocon Group Chairman Venugopal Dhoot

In the writ petition before the High Court, Dhoot had alleged arrest by the CBI. Dhoot had sought quashing of the special CBI court’s remand orders of 26, 28 and 29 December, 2022 and asked the high court to declare his arrest in gross violation of Sections 41 and 41A of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC)and Article 14, 19(1)(d) and 21 of the Constitution of India. It was argued before the High Court that the only reason cited in the ‘arrest memo’ was “kept changing his versions and therefore not cooperating with the investigation”.

A Bench comprising Justice AS Bopanna and Justice MM Sundresh issued notice after briefly hearing submissions made by the Additional Solicitor General (ASG), SV Raju, appearing on behalf of CBI. The ASG submitted that the bail was granted on a hyper-technicality in respect to Section 41 CrPC. It was argued that it is not required that the investigating officer elaborates on the reason for arrest in the memo, since the case diary discloses a detailed account of the same. He informed the Bench that the bail was granted without perusal of the case diary.

“This is a case of cheating of INR 1730 crores…and he was granted bail on a hyper-technical ground on non-compliance of Section 41 CrPC. On law also it is not correct. The investigating officer need not elaborately state. The case diary will state everything. Without perusal of the case diary bail is granted”, the ASG argued.

Background

The CBI began investigating the accused in January 2018 after reports that Videocon's Dhoot paid a firm, which was allegedly set up with ex-ICICI Bank MD Chanda Kochhar’s husband Deepak Kochhar (both are co-accused) and two relatives, six months after his firm got a INR 3,250 crore loan from ICICI Bank in 2012.

The irregularities were with regard to the grant of six high-value loans worth around INR 1,575 crore to five firms of the Videocon Group between June 2009 and October 2011. The loans were granted in contravention of the rules and policy of the sanctioning committee, the agency has alleged. These loans were later termed as non-performing assets resulting in wrongful loss to ICICI bank and wrongful gain to the borrowers and accused persons, the CBI said. The total misappropriation is to the tune of INR 1730 crores as on April 26, 2012, according to the CBI.

Dhoot was arrested after the Kochhars were booked under Sections 7, 13(2) r/w 13(1) & (d) of PC Act, 420 & 120 B of IPC in the case being investigated by the CBI.

[Case Title: CBI v. Venugopal Nandlal Dhoot SLP(Crl) No. 7068/2023]

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