Court sends Rakesh Wadhawan, his son to ED custody in PMC bank scam

A Mumbai Special Court sent the Housing Development Infrastructure Ltd's (HDIL) promoters Rakesh Wadhawan and his son Sarang, arrested in connection with the  4,355 crore rupees Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank scam to the Enforcement Directorate custody yesterday.

Special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court Judge P Rajvaidya remanded HDIL Chairman and Managing Director Rakesh Wadhawan and his son in the ED custody till 22nd of October. The duo was arrested by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police earlier this month.

ED's Counsel Kavita Patil told the court that the Wadhawans were the actual beneficiaries of the proceeds and their interrogation is required to track the money trail. Defence lawyer



Amit Desai submitted that every effort was being taken by the group (HDIL) to find a solution to the bank's problems. He claimed that the falsification of documents, which the probe agency has been alleging, happened in the books of the bank and not at their end.

The EOW, earlier this month registered a case against the Wadhawans and top officials of the PMC Bank The bank officials replaced 44 loan accounts of the HDIL with 21,049 fictitious accounts to camouflage huge loan defaults by the real estate group. Besides the father-son duo, police have arrested bank's former Director Surjit Singh Arora, former Managing Director Joy Thomas and former Chairman Waryam Singh in connection with the scam.