Mithi river desilting ‘scam': Court says no justification of ‘Rs 2.41 crore as CEO salary', rejects accused's bail plea

Indian Express

a day ago

In a detailed order rejecting the bail plea of the main accused in the Mithi river desilting 'scam' case, a special court has considered that there was no document to show that the accused was given Rs 2.41 crore as salary as CEO to explain the transfer of money to his personal account.
The court had on July 11 rejected bail to Ketan Kadam, the CEO of firm Virgo Specialities. The Mumbai Police had claimed that Kadam entered into a contract with a company — Maptrop Technical Services — which supplied machines in a manner which compelled contractors carrying out desilting of the river to hire the machines at an inflated rate, causing wrongful loss to the civic body Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
'It appears from statement of Bhushan Salunke and ledger accounts statement of M/s. Virgo that the said company had transferred Rs 6 crores for purchase of the machines to MAPTROP Ltd. and out of that, Rs.2,41,20,000/- has been transferred in the personal account of the applicant (Kadam). Even though the Advocate for the applicant submitted that said amount is salary of the applicant as CEO, however there is no document for such justification for receiving such huge salary. Even there is no document showing that, how much monthly salary was agreed to be given by Virgo to the applicant,' special judge N G Shukla said in the order, which was made available on Tuesday.
The case against Kadam and others including BMC officials is that while tenders were issued for desilting of the Mithi river from 2019 to 2024, conditions were inserted in the terms of agreement to compel contractors to hire machines from the company linked to Kadam. He denied this, claiming that contractors were free to purchase machines from other companies as per the tender documents.
One of the allegations against Kadam is that he incurred expenses of flight tickets and lodging of three BMC officials from his bank account for visits to Delhi for demonstration of the machines, as was submitted by additional public prosecutor Chaitrali Panshikar.
'If applicant would have acted merely as an employee, he had no reason to spent money from his personal account on flight tickets and hotel expenses of BMC officers prior to execution of tripartite agreement (MOU) and Agreement of Hire with the contractors. This clearly shows involvement of applicant as a conspirator in setting terms and conditions of the tenders in a manner of compelling the contractors to hire the machines from Virgo. There was preplan of applicant to purchase machines by setting the terms of tenders, therefore, he has incurred said expenses,' the court said, referring to the agreement which said that the supplier can only rent machines from Virgo. Kadam had referred to terms and conditions, claiming no such compulsion to hire was imposed.
The court also said that prima facie, there is proof that Kadam had personally gained from the contractors through shell companies, calling him the key person in the conspiracy who acted as intermediary with the BMC.
'Investigation is still in progress and statements of number of the witnesses, including the high ranking BMC officers, are yet to be recorded. Considering influencing personality of applicant, if released on bail, he may influence witnesses and create hurdle in investigation,' the court said.
The Enforcement Directorate has also this week sought permission to record Kadam's statement in jail in connection with its own probe into the case.