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14 days' judicial custody for Rita Singh

Onkar Singh in New Delhi

Rita Singh, managing director of the Mesco Group of Companies, was remanded to 14 days of judicial remand by the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate R K Gauba after the expiry of her six days' police remand.

She would now be produced before the court on July 21.

Till then she would be lodged in Delhi's Tihar jail.

The judge accepted the CBI plea that as the case was still under investigation she should be kept in judicial custody.

CMM Gauba would hear her bail application on Monday. Harish Gulati, senior advocate of Supreme Court, on behalf of his client Rita Singh, moved the application.

The bail application of J K Singh, Rita Singh husband, could not be taken up on Friday as the CMM refused to hear the application and sent it back to the Sessions Judge.

Talking to rediff.com, Rita Singh claimed that she and her family members had been 'framed'. "We are being persecuted by the CBI unnecessarily. There is someone behind this whole thing," she said.

"I will hold a major press conference once I am out on bail. We have been cooperating with the CBI from day one. Our Bhubaneswar Steel Project is worth Rs 7.50 billion. We would have been able to provide 7,000 people with jobs. The project is almost complete. And here we are being hounded. We won't flee. My daughter Natasha met the officers of CBI on Friday and Saturday last. And yet they claim that she is absconding," said Rita Singh.

She alleged that despite the court directive, she was not provided with a fan in the lock up at the Lodhi Road police station. She asked the court's permission to carry extra clothes and toiletries as no one is allowed to meet undertrials on weekends. The court accepted this plea.

The CBI, meanwhile, denied the charges levelled by Rita Singh. "Every accused says the same thing. What about the swindling of Rs 1.30 billion. We have registered a case against them under sections 120 B, IPC read with sections 420, 467, 468, 471 and 477A of the IPC. There is evidence to prove the charges against all the five accused," said a CBI official.

The case against Rita Singh, her husband, Deepak Singh (finance controller of Mesco Group of Companies), Natasha Singh, and S S Batra (former company secretary of the company), was registered on August 10, 1998.

The CBI stated in the first information report, "It has been reliably learnt that during the period 1992-1997, J K Singh, Rita Singh, Natasha Singh and others were party to criminal conspiracy with an object to cheat insurance companies/banks and financial institutions, shareholders and others by misrepresentation of facts, forgery, falsification of records and thereby obtain huge benefits for themselves and others."

"It is learnt that M/s Mideast (India) Limited got printed and issued 27,55,786 fake certificates without receiving any consideration, for the purpose of pledging them as security for availing loan facilities from various banks/financial institutions where such facility was subject to pledging of shares," the FIR further said.

These were printed and issued by the company without mentioning the lock-in period representing these to be transferable whereas they were not transferable. Such fake shares/certificates were pledged with Banque Nationale de Paris, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi; Bank of Baroda, Parliament Street, New Delhi; Federal Bank, West End Colony, New Delhi; Small Industries Development Bank of India, New Delhi; and Bank of Madura," CBI alleged in the report.

"The documents seized by the Income Tax authorities from the premises of A R Rohtagi, chartered accountant of Mesco Group of Companies, and of the company M/s Mideast Integrated Steels Limited reveal large-scale manipulation during 1996 in the books of the accounts," the FIR adds.

When asked what does he have to say about the charges levelled against his clients, Harish Gulati said that he would not like to comment on the merits of the case at the moment.

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