Kaustuv Ray, Shivaji Panja arrested in Rs 515 cr bank fraud

Kolkata: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday arrested two directors of Kolkata-based computer manufacturing firm RP Infosystems Limited — Kaustuv Ray and Shivaji Panja — for allegedly cheating a consortium of banks to the tune of Rs 515.15 crore, an official said.

The accused were arrested on Thursday following repeated interrogations at the CBI's officer at CGO Complex in Salt Lake. It was the fourth time when the duo had been summoned for interrogation by the central investigating agency. Both of them will be produced before the CBI special court on Friday.

The investigating officers will be praying for their remand when they will be produced before the court on Friday. Besides interrogating them further, the investigating officers will take them to different locations for search operations.

The CBI had initiated a probe on the basis of a complaint lodged by DV Prasad, deputy general manager of the Circle Office of Canara Bank in Kolkata, against the RP Infosystems Limited and its directors — Panja, Roy and Vinay Bafna. A complaint was also lodged against Debnath Pal, the vice-president (finance) of the company and unknown officials of the 11 banks who had assisted them in getting the loan amount.

Canara Bank authorities had lodged a complaint on behalf of the bank consortium.

Preliminary investigation revealed that they used to do business of manufacturing and trading desktops and laptops across the country under the brand name "Chirag".

The directors had managed to get loans from the banks stating that the company was in need of "working capital" as "it was devolving from 2012 onwards due to non-maintenance of funds".

They had provided a fake list of debtors to lend money from the banks and siphoned off the entire amount. It was alleged that the directors had shown that they would be getting a large amount of money from companies who had procured computer hardware and accessories from them. Moreover, the company failed to repay the amount as a result of which the loan amount has now been classified as non-performing assets by the banks.