 "Nirav Modi, pnb, mehul choksi, cbi")
A special court on Saturday issued non-bailable warrants (NBWs) against diamond traders Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi in the alleged Rs 114 billion Punjab National Bank scam.
The court, set up under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), issued the NBWs on applications filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), one of the agencies probing the bank fraud cases registered last month.
The ED had earlier issued summonses to Modi and Choksi, both key accused in the scam cases, asking them to appear before the central agency.
However, the two diamond traders, who are said to have left the country before criminal cases were registered, had failed to appear before the ED, promoting the agency to move the PMLA court for issuance of NBWs against them.
On February 27, the ED had moved the court seeking an NBW against Modi.
The agency had told the court that it had issued three summonses to Modi to appear before it.
"We issued three summonses to Choksi. He neither responded to those summonses nor appeared before the agency," special ED prosecutor Hiten Venegaonkar had told the special court presided over by Judge M S Azmi here on March 1. The fraud amount increased to Rs 127 billion after PNB attributed an additional Rs 13 billion to Choksi-owned Gitanjali Gems. With this, the total amount attributed to Gitanjali increased to Rs 61 billion.
