SC notice to Chanda Kochhar and Deepak Kochhar: Videocon loan fraud case, their arrest was declared illegal by Bombay High Court

The Supreme Court on Friday (September 6) issued notice to former ICICI Bank Managing Director and CEO Chanda Kochhar and her husband Deepak Kochhar, seeking their response on the Bombay High Court’s decision declaring their arrest as illegal.

In fact, the Bombay High Court had declared the arrest of Chanda Kochhar and her husband Deepak Kochhar illegal in the loan fraud case on February 6 this year. The Bombay High Court had said that the CBI had arrested Chanda and Deepak Kochhar without applying its mind and without due respect to the law.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Sanjay Kumar issued notice to both of them and sought their response on the appeal filed by the CBI. Chanda Kochhar and her husband Deepak Kochhar were arrested by the CBI on December 23, 2022 in the Videocon-ICICI Bank loan case.

CBI arrested Chanda and Deepak on 23 December 2022 In the Videocon-ICICI Bank loan case, the CBI arrested Chanda and Deepak on 23 December 2022. After this, they immediately approached the High Court challenging the arrest and demanded that it be declared illegal. Apart from this, they also demanded to be released on bail through an interim order.

On January 9, 2023, the court had granted bail to Kochhar in an interim order. Noting that the CBI had made the arrest in a reckless and unwise manner, in its February 6 order, the bench said that Section 41A of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) was introduced to avoid routine arrest.

Understand the whole matter…

Fraud by giving loan to Videocon Deepak and Chanda Kochhar are accused of committing fraud through loans given by ICICI Bank to Videocon. These loans later turned into non-performing assets. In this case, CBI, ED, SFIO and Income Tax Department are investigating Deepak and Chanda Kochhar.

This includes a loan of Rs 3250 crore given to Videocon in the year 2012. According to the allegations, former chairman of Videocon Group Venugopal Dhoot had invested crores of rupees in Kochhar’s company NuPower Renewables after Videocon got the loan.

The loan was approved by a committee of which Chanda Kochhar was also a member. In October 2018, Chanda had to resign over this matter.

The investigation of the case started in 2016 The investigation into the case began in 2016 when Arvind Gupta, an investor in both the firms, Videocon Group and ICICI Bank, raised concerns about loan irregularities. Gupta wrote to the RBI and even the Prime Minister about this, but his complaint was not heeded at that time. Another whistle-blower complained in March 2018.

FIR dated 24 January 2019 After a complaint was made against the top management, the attention of many agencies was drawn towards this. However, in the same month, the bank issued a statement saying that they have full faith in Chanda Kochhar. This statement was given after investigating Chanda’s alleged role in passing the loan of Videocon Group. The agencies continued their investigation and after increasing pressure on the bank, it also started an investigation. After this, CBI registered an FIR on 24 January 2019.

Names of 4 companies including Chanda, Deepak, Dhoot The CBI had named Chanda Kochhar, Deepak Kochhar and Venugopal Dhoot of Videocon Group as accused in the loan fraud case in a First Information Report (FIR) registered under sections related to criminal conspiracy, cheating and corruption of the IPC.

ED arrested him in 2020 In January 2020, the Enforcement Directorate had confiscated assets worth more than Rs 78 crore of the Kochhar family. After this, the agency arrested Deepak Kochhar under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after several rounds of questioning.