Delhi High Court has issued notice to Malvinder Singh and Sunil Godhwani, in ED's application seeking custodial interrogation of the duo in the Religare Fraud case.
Appearing for ED, Amit Mahajan submitted before the court that the custodial interrogation is required to confront, both Singh and Godhwani, with voluminous documents that have been recovered during investigation.
Mr Mahajan also argued that the nature of transactions and the volume of documents in the present case, necessitates custodial interrogation. He also informed the court that as the judicial custody of the accused ends on 28th, custodial interrogation shall be granted till the expiry of the said judicial custody.
'Sir, I'm seeking custodial interrogation because it's the matter of public money', he added. He also informed the court that the accused persons need to be confronted with the statements of around 22 directors.
Justice Chander Shekhar inquired about the reasons for seeking further custodial interrogation. He asked the agency, as to why it couldn't finish the interrogation when the accused persons were under its custody of 9 days.
Mr Mahajan replied by saying that 3 days out of those 9 were wasted by virtue of lawyers going on strike. Moreover, a period of 9 days was not enough to confront the accused with all the materials collected, considering the facts of the present case.
Malvinder Singh and Sunil Godhwani are accused of money laundering as per the offences laid down in sections 3 and 4 of PMLA. They are accused of committing financial fraud running into 3000 crores, which is dated to the period of their ownership of Religare Finvest.
They were arrested by ED on November 14.
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