Guj HC denies bail to postal agents in monetary fraud case
Updated: Feb 20th, 2024
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| Gang nabbed by Crime Branch (img: File) |
Updated on Feb 20, at 2.17 p.m.
The Gujarat High Court has denied bail to prime accused Tejas Shah’s son Malav.
Justice MR Mengdey, hearing this plea, remarked, “This is a serious case of embezzlement of innocent citizens’ lifetime earnings. The court is not in the opinion to grant bail to the accused of such a crime.”
The accused, Malav Shah, had approached the HC over the quashing of his bail by the Sessions Court.
Opposing the bail applicant’s plea, the additional principal solicitor general argued that ₹33 lakh were transferred to the accused’s account, which determines his involvement in this case.
Updated on Feb 8, at 2.19 p.m.
A city sessions court on Feb 6 denied regular bail to two postal agents of the year 1999-2000 in the Shastrinagar post office in an alleged scam of ₹6 cr.
Small investors and a large number of senior citizens lost their age-old savings to alleged scammers Tejas Shah and his wife Gira Shah and another accused, Darshana Bhatt, who duped them under the guise of postal agents.
For the crime branch, the public prosecutor of the city civil and sessions court, Sudhir Brahmbhatt, said that accused Gira and Darshana misused their authority as postal agents and duped innocents- especially senior citizens, of crores of money.
They recovered the lifetime savings of common people by giving them schemes like the Monthly Income Scheme (MIS), the Post Office Time Deposit Scheme (TD scheme), the Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP), and the Senior Citizens’ Saving Scheme (SCSS).
The accused used to exchange the real post office passbooks with the fake ones during the documentation of the schemes and obtained ₹6 cr from them till now.
Even after years of the revelation of the scam, the authority has been frequently receiving complaints from the victims of the scam against the three accused.
As per the details of the case, Tejas Shah, whose post agency was dismissed by the postal department in 2017, along with other accused, opened an agency near the post office in Shastrinagar and scammed a number of citizens.
Currently, Tejas, the main accused, is in Sabarmati Jail, while Gira and Darshana applied for bail in the sessions court, and were rejected.
Updated on Jan 22, at 9.45 p.m.
A gang run by an Ahmedabad family was busted for scamming many innocents to the tune of ₹4 cr in Ahmedabad.
The gang employed as postal service agents has been accused of withdrawing huge amounts from the accounts by forging the signatures of the beneficiaries.
As per the complaint Hemant Hukmani and his family had invested around ₹27 lakh through the family of Tejas Shah, his wife Gira, their son Malav, and Darshna Bhatt, who were employed at the Shastrinagar post office since 2018.
Although Tejas maintained a passbook over the entries of the deposits made, six months ago, Hemant learned that a large-scale fraud was being carried out at the post office.
Upon inquiring, it was found that the post office passbook and the entries made by Tejas were fake and intended to mislead the account holders.
It was also found that the accused forged the investors’ signatures and withdrew lakhs over time. They then deposited the fraudulent money into their other accounts.
It was found that they syphoned off a total of ₹4 cr from several investors through this modus operandi.
Following this, the economic wing launched a probe, and the accused were arrested.
Talking over the arrests, a crime branch police officer said, “After the arrest of the accused, other crimes will also be registered and action will be taken. Primary investigation suggests that the number of frauds may increase further.“
