Calcutta High Court (Appellete Side)Vivek Kumar Agrawal vs The State Of West Bengal on 3 December, 2018Author:Sanjib BanerjeeBench:Sanjib Banerjee1Serial No.45.December 3, 2018.
    SG
Rejected
                                         CRM 10428 of 2018

                           In Re. An application for anticipatory bail underSection 438of the Code of Criminal Procedure.In the matter of:Vivek Kumar Agrawal-versus-The State of West Bengal

                           Mr Sekhar Kumar Basu
                           Mr Somnath Banerjee
                           Mr Indrajit Chand
                                                 ... for the petitioner.Mr Saswata Gopal Mukherjee
                          Mr Madhusudan Sur
                          Mr Rudradipta Nandy
                                                     ... for the State.The petitioner seeks anticipatory bail in connection with
              Bhowanipur Police Station Case No.371 of 2018 dated August 24,
              2018 underSections 120B/272/420/467/468/471of the Indian
              Penal Code and addingSection 13of the Prevention of Corruption
              Act.The petitioner claims that the petitioner is a mere employee of
              a company that runs a rice-mill and is engaged in obtaining paddy
              from farmers and providing quality rice under a State scheme.The State opposes the prayer and says that the petitioner is
              one of the persons who was in the thick of things and who was
              responsible for arranging debit cards in the names of many farmers
              with barely the numbers of the cards printed on the cards and the
              names of the card-holders inserted by hand.       A number of such2cards issued by HDFC Bank have been carried to court and the
investigating agency claims that such cards were recovered from the
office of the rice-mill.The State claims that the extent of the fraudulent scheme may
run into several thousands of crores and its modus operandi
appears to have been to obtain the KYC information from the
farmers and retain the debit cards of the farmers for the money
entering their accounts from the State funds to be removed and
parked elsewhere.          In this connection, the investigating agency
names a concern by the name of Abhimanyu Business Private
Limited.      The transaction records of several of such transactions
have also been carried to court.        The statements of some of the
farmers are shown.Considering the possible extent of what appears to be a
fraudulent scheme, the custodial interrogation of the petitioner
cannot be excused, though nothing in this order should be
perceived to be an acceptance of the charges levelled against the
petitioner.It would be opposed to public interest, considering the nature
of the scheme, if the investigating agency is impeded or impaired in
any manner in unravelling the apparent mystery.The petitioner's prayer is rejected at this stage.CRM 10428 of 2018 is dismissed.( Sanjib Banerjee, J. )3( Suvra Ghosh, J. )