No information on whereabouts of Sandesaras: CBI
New Delhi, Sep 24 : Amid media reports that Chetan and Nitin Sandesara, both directors of Gujarat based pharma company Sterling Biotech and wanted in an over Rs 5,000 crore bank fraud case may have fled the country, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday said that it has "no information" about their whereabouts.
A senior CBI official said that it has no information on the whereabouts of Chetan and Nitin Sandesara.
The agency's official's remark came soon after media reports said that Chetan and Nitin had fled to Nigeria with their families.
The CBI had booked Sterling Biotech, its directors Chetan Jayantilal Sandesara, Dipti Chetan Sandesara, Rajbhushan Omprakash Dixit, Nitin Jayantilal Sandesara and Vilas Joshi, chartered accountant Hemant Hathi, former Director of Andhra Bank Anup Prakash Garg and some unidentified persons in connection with the alleged bank fraud in October 2017.
According to the CBI FIR, Sterling Biotech had taken over Rs 5,000 crore loans from a consortium of banks led by Andhra Bank, which had turned into non-performing assets. The total pending dues of the group companies were Rs 5,383 crore as on December 31, 2016.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) initiated a money laundering probe into the case taking cognizance of the CBI FIR.
On January 13, the ED arrested Garg. The agency also arrested a Delhi-based businessman Gagan Dhawan in connection with the case in November last year. The ED also attached properties worth Rs 4,703 crore.
The ED in a statement said that the loans to the tune of Rs 5,000 crore was disbursed by the various banks during the years 2004-2012.
It also said that the look out circulars against the accused were opened in August 2017.
During the course of investigation, three persons were arrested, one of them named Gagan Dhawan who was close to the "power centre" when the loans were sanctioned.
The ED also said that it was finding more properties.
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Count of voters in Gujarat drops by 73.73 lakh to 4.34 crore post-SIR
Ahmedabad (PTI): The names of nearly 74 lakh voters have been dropped from Gujarat's draft electoral rolls after the completion of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, pegging the total count of electors at 4.34 crore as against the 5.08 crore earlier, an official said on Friday.
The draft electoral rolls were published here by the Election Commission on Friday.
A total of 73.73 lakh voters were omitted from the electoral rolls after the exercise initiated by the EC to clean the rolls, state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Hareet Shukla said.
"Before the publication of the draft electoral rolls, a total of 5,08,43,436 voters were registered in the state. After the publication of these rolls, the number of voters is now 4,34,70,109," he said.
"During the SIR campaign, the names of a total of 73,73,327 voters have been removed from the draft electoral roll," Shukla said.
The names of voters in following categories were deleted in the draft electoral rolls -- deceased voters (18,07,278), absent voters (9,69,662), voters who have permanently migrated (40,25,553), voters registered in two places (3,81,470) and others (1,89,364), a release from CEO office said.
The SIR exercise began in Gujarat on November 4 and ended on December 14.
After the publication of draft rolls, objections and claims regarding them can be submitted to authorities till January 18, the EC earlier said.
