Jammu: The Crime Branch of Jammu and Kashmir Police on Thursday filed a supplementary charge sheet against a couple here for duping people of nearly Rs 2.93 crore in the name of a co-operative with the promise of providing higher rates of interest.
The charge sheet was filed in a local court against Surjeet Singh, the then chairman-cum-managing director of Rural Development Multipurpose Cooperative Limited and his wife Jyoti Pawar in the case filed in 2019 against them under various sections of Ranbir Panel Code and the Banking Regulation Act, a spokesman of the Crime Branch, Jammu said.
He said a written complaint was lodged in the Crime Branch, Jammu wherein several complainants had alleged that a credit society, registered with the cooperatives department, was operating in different districts having 72 branches since 2015.
The employees were assigned targets of taking cash from the people in the form of fixed deposit, recurring deposit, saving accounts, share capital and nominal membership, the spokesman said.
He said a preliminary verification was initiated and the allegations were prima-facie substantiated and it was also found that the accused did not abide by the directions of the court and also without having any valid permission or licence from the RBI and from the Registrar of Cooperative Societies, J&K, collected money from the public and consequently cheated them.
A large number of complaints of similar nature were also received against the accused during the course of inquiry and were clubbed together for a thorough probe, he said.
The investigations revealed that the accused had sought permission for running the cooperative in Jammu district from the office of Registrar of Companies, Jammu by submitting forged documents and the accused with criminal intention illegally indulged in operation of 72 such branches across five districts — Jammu, Samba, Kathua, Reasi and Udhampur, the spokesman further said.
The accused, in the garb of a cooperative, kept on minting money from the people in the form of cash deposits with false promise of providing huge interest on them. The accused being the Chairman-cum-Managing Director of the cooperative (RDMLC) used to take all the cash from different branches of the so-called Rural Development Multipurpose Cooperative Ltd. without any accountability, the spokesman said.
He said the investigation found that the accused diverted the money for his personal gain, which included payment of his housing loan, purchase of luxurious vehicles besides using a large chunk of deposited money on outsourcing printing press for publishing two of his newspapers.
The accused also managed to procure licence from the office of excise commissioner for sale of liquor. The investigation conducted so far has established involvement of the accused in duping the people of Reasi and Udhampur districts to the tune of about Rs 2.93 crore, the crime branch spokesman added.
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