PMC Bank scam: Three accused sent in judicial remand till Oct 23

A court here on Wednesday (October 16) remanded two top HDIL officials and Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank’s former chairman in judicial custody in connection with the multi-crore scam at the bank.

Outside the court, several depositors protested demanding that their money be returned. The three accused — Housing Development Infrastructure Ltd’s (HDIL) chairman and managing director Rakesh Wadhawan, his son Sarang Wadhawan and PMC Banks former chairman Waryam Singh — were produced before Metropolitan Magistrate S G Shaikh as their custody ended on Wednesday.

The magistrate remanded them in judicial custody till October 23. The Wadhawans were arrested on October 3, while Singh was held on October 5 for their alleged involvement in the ₹4,355 crore scam at the PMC Bank.

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) earlier this month registered a case against the Wadhawans and top officials of PMC Bank for allegedly causing losses to the tune of ₹4,355.43 crore to the bank.

After the scam was unearthed at the bank, which has deposits of over ₹11,000 crore, the Reserve Bank of India last month appointed an administrator over it, and capped withdrawals at ₹1,000.

On Monday evening, the withdrawal cap was hiked to ₹40,000. Besides these three accused, the EOW also arrested the bank’s former managing director Joy Thomas, whose police custody will expire on October 17.

The EOW earlier told the court that bank officials replaced 44 loan accounts of HDIL with 21,049 fictitious accounts, to camouflage huge loan defaults by the real estate group which landed the bank in the current crisis.