Updated: December 12, 2020 7:24:34 am
The gold, which amounts to 400.47 kg, and in the form of bars and ornaments, was seized by the CBI from Surana’s office building in Chennai, and locked and sealed in the firm’s vaults. (Representative image)
In great embarrassment to the IWC, the Madras High Court on Friday ordered the Tamil Nadu police to investigate the disappearance of 103 kg of gold (amounting to more than 43 million rupees) from the agency’s custody, rejecting his claim that “the prestige of the CBI would decline if the investigation is carried out by the local police.” When asking the CB-CID to register an FIR, the court said: “It may be an agni pariksha (fire trial) for the CBI, but that cannot be avoided. If your hands are clean, like Sita, they can come out brighter. If not, they would have to face the music. “
On the IWC special prosecutor who requested an investigation by the CBI or the National Investigation Agency instead of the state police, Judge PN Prakash said: “The court cannot subscribe to this view because the law does not sanction such an inference. . You have to trust all the police and it is not in your mouth to say that the CBI has special horns, while the local police only have a tail ”.
The IWC had seized the gold in connection with cases dating back to 2012 brought by allegations that officials from the Minerals and Metals Trading Corporation of India (MMTC) in Chennai had shown undue favors towards Surana Corporation Limited, which was dealing with the importation of gold. gold and silver. The gold, which amounts to 400.47 kg, and in the form of bars and ornaments, was seized by the IWC from Surana’s office building in Chennai, and locked and sealed in the firm’s vaults. The CBI claims to have presented the keys to the vault to a CBI Special Court in Chennai, although no date is mentioned in the documents.
In September 2013, the IWC registered another case, saying that while the seized gold was unwanted in the 2012 cases, it had discovered that Surana had imported the same in violation of Foreign Trade Policy. Therefore, the IWC requested that the seized gold be transferred from the first case to the new one, after which the court allowed the transfer of some 400 kg recorded. “There were no physical inventories by the court” as the gold was already in the vault.
Subsequently, in 2015, the CBI submitted a closure report in the second case stating that “adequate evidence is not available.” The CBI Special Court accepted the same but ordered that the seized gold be turned over to the General Directorate of Foreign Trade (DGFT). This order was later overturned by the Madras High Court at the request of Surana.
Meanwhile, the SBI initiated proceedings against Surana for non-payment of fees (the company had outstanding loans worth Rs 1,160 million) and referred the CBI Special Court in search of the seized gold.
In its Friday order directing an investigation against the IWC, the high court noted: “So … all of them, like the famous character Colorado played by the late Omar Sharif in the Hollywood blockbuster Mackenna’s Gold, went on an expedition hunting for gold to the Special Court Just as Colorado reached an agreement with Monkey, the Apache, to share the spoils of gold, the SBI and Surana reached an agreement and filed a memorandum of commitment with the Special Court. . to deliver the gold that weighed 400.47 kg “for the payment of fees.
The CBI opposed Surana’s request, backed by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (under which the DGFT is located). Finally, in December 2019, the National Commercial Law Court, which the SBI had approached, ordered that the gold be turned over for distribution to the six banks to which Surana owed money.
However, when the CBI opened the vaults in the presence of the bank’s representatives in February this year, it was discovered that the gold was short at 103,864 kg, “much to everyone’s shock and surprise,” as the high court noted.
The IWC told the high court that they had used a weighing machine in the Surana office to arrive at a figure of 400.47 kg for the gold after the seizure, and that the seals affixed to the vaults were intact, so which argued that the agency could not be responsible for the lost gold. The Special Prosecutor’s Office said there could be a weight discrepancy because the gold chains were weighed collectively at the time of seizure, while in February each item was weighed individually, using more sophisticated machines.
Rejecting these arguments, the court said it was “unable to understand how there could be a discrepancy of more than 100 kg … Gold will not decrease in weight like ganja by the way out.”
The higher court said that if the gold had been physically entrusted to the CBI Special Court and disappeared from there, “the CBI would have wept badly from the rooftops and demanded the scalp of the Special Judge and his Property Secretary. The special judge and the property secretary would have been suspended and even arrested… ”.
Noting that “César’s wife should be above suspicion”, the court ordered the CB-CID Metro wing in Chennai, which depends on the state government, to register a regular FIR for theft and entrust the investigation to a police officer. SP range to complete probe in six months.
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