The Supreme Court of India on Tuesday sent three directors of Amrapali group to police custody, directing them to hand over all the documents of the 46 group companies to forensic auditors.
A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and UU Lalit said the directors will remain in police custody till they hand over all the documents. The court said the conduct of the directors was in “gross violation” of its order. “You are playing hide and seek. You are trying to mislead the court,” the bench said.
It directed the Delhi police to seize all the documents of the Amrapali group and hand them over to forensic auditors, emphasising that not a single document of these companies should remain in custody of the group.
The top court had earlier allowed NBCC Ltd. to float tenders for selecting the builder to complete the stalled projects of Amrapali Group and asked it to prepare a detailed project report for pending projects within 60 days.
On Sept.12, the Supreme Court had appointed NBCC to develop stalled projects of the realty firm and directed the debts recovery tribunal to sell the unencumbered commercial properties of the group.
It had also directed the opening of an escrow account in the apex court in which the amount received after the sale of properties would be deposited and later disbursed to NBCC to start construction of the pending projects in Group A and B categories.
It also directed that bank accounts, balance sheets and other documents of all the 46 Amrapali companies and Jotindra Steel since 2008 be given to the forensic auditors.
The apex court had on Sept. 6 identified 16 properties of Amrapali for auctioning, preferably by NBCC, to give the public sector undertaking an initial corpus to start work on the stalled projects. It had also ordered a forensic audit of the firm and its promoters to gauge the extent of financial wrongdoings.
The group chairman and managing director had come under the apex court's scanner for declaring his assets worth at Rs 67 crore against Rs 847 crore in his affidavit filed during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, when he had unsuccessfully contested as a Janata Dal(United) candidate from Bihar's Jehanabad constituency.
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